Atlas of Family Names in Ireland

William J. Smyth

The seeds for this Atlas of Irish Family
Names in Ireland project were first sown more
than a decade ago, given my interest in using Petty's
so-called ‘1659 Census’ to map that
distribution of ‘Old English’ and
‘New English/Scots’ names (see Smyth
and Whelan, Common Ground, 1988). This
census provides a mid-seventeenth century listing,
probably unique amongst European countries, of family
names and their numbers for each of the Irish
baronies enumerated c. 1659. For Ireland, the seventeenth
century marks a great rupture in its cultural history. It
was then that Irish first and second names—i.e. family
names—assumed their anglicised forms that are known and
used today. Petty's ‘Census’ record of
these family names and their distribution is, therefore,
invaluable.

I was then also interested in mapping the
current distribution of Irish family names in
order to assess their geographical expansion, and the role
of migration and urbanisation, in particular, in the
transformation of family name distributions since the
seventeenth century. With the aid of the current telephone
directories for both the Republic and Northern Ireland, I
have been mapping up to 50 of the most prominent family
names in Ireland. Concurrently, the digitising of c. 3300
Irish
‘civil’/‘medieval’
parishes by the Department of Geography at UCC to
facilitate detailed mapping for our Famine Commemoration
Exhibition of 1995/96 provided a ready-made and innovative
GIS (Geographical Information Systems) platform for other
projects involving digital mapping and data display (see
Part IV below).

The Documents of Ireland component of this
Atlas of Family Names in Ireland project
(previously entitled Atlas of Irish Names)
has allowed for the selection and digital mapping of over
250 family names at both the baronial scale for c.1659 and
at the very intimate civil parish scale from Griffith's
Valuation c. 1850 (see Part III below). In sum, this work,
represents the mapping of close on ten per cent of the
family names of Ireland for the two time-periods
specified. A major focus of this phase of the project,
therefore, is to seek an understanding of the
transformations in names and their distribution between
the mid-seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries.

The sample of surnames selected involved a number of
considerations. In 1890, Matheson identified the 100 most
numerous surnames in Ireland using data from his Registrar
General's files. All these first 100 surnames have been
mapped for c. 1850 and, if applicable, for c.1659. In
addition, a key consideration of this ongoing project is
to seek to identify and interpret (via family names
analysis) the originating regions and geographical
expansion of a number of key immigrant groups who have
settled in Ireland. Clearly the most dominant and most
widespread of such surnames relate to the Celtic/Gaelic
era and the sample of surnames mapped, therefore, reflects
this situation (see Part V and VI). However, a critical
concern is the possible use of this data in an attempt to
identify the localities where the Scandinavian-Irish, the
Anglo-Normans (later Old English) and the New English and
Scots settled. Again, the selection of specific surnames
to be mapped closely reflected these concerns. For example
the surnames Cotter (Scandinavian-Irish); Fitzgerald,
Butler, Walsh (Old English) and Bell and Campbell (New
English/Scots) are illustrated in Part VI.

In addition, the Documents of Ireland
phase of the project has allowed for a partial exploration
of the origins and expansion of both first and second
names in Ireland. Graduate students' work both on the
Annals of Ulster and the Annals of
Inisfallen has been most helpful here. In
seeking to understand this transformation of Irish society
in the crucial and innovative naming period from c.800 to
1200AD, their work on the tabulation of occupational
stability and change over the period has been most
helpful. However, given both time and, more particularly,
funding constraints, it has not been possible—as
yet—to follow through with a far more indepth and
thorough analysis of the linguistic evidence about the
origins and development of first and second names in
Ireland. This requires the addition of language experts in
Old/Middle Irish, Norse and Anglo-Saxon to the project
team. It is hoped that future funding will allow for this
necessary endeavour.

Likewise, funding will be sought to engage genetic
anthropologists to carry out the kind of comparative DNA
testing necessary to confirm or refute hypotheses about
the nature of the relationships—if any—between the
bearers of specific family names and their ethnic roots.
It is intended to collaborate with Professor Thomas
McCarthy of the Biochemistry Department at University
College Cork and the Genetics Department at Trinity
College Dublin, assuming adequate funding can be found for
such a costly endeavour. These kind of studies would be
particularly relevant to a more precise evaluation of the
nature and geographical extent of the Scandinavian
contribution to the Irish stock and culture.

The other most positive outcome of this Documents
of Ireland part of the project has been that the
mapping of all the family names in the 1659 Census has
been achieved. This means that a comparison can be drawn
in the near future between the distribution of all these
mid seventeenth century family names with their mid
nineteenth century equivalents via digital mapping from
Griffith's Valuation. This will involve, therefore, the
mapping of a further c.400 surnames (see Index, Part V).
Partial funding has already been gained for this next
stage of the project. Once this mapping is completed, it
is intended to produce in book form an
Atlas for both the full list of 1659 family
names and their nineteenth century distributions.

Since Woulfe's pioneering early study Sloinnte
Gaedheal is Gall—Irish Names and Surnames
(1906), and the prodigious and most helpful publications
of Edward MacLysaght (Irish Families, 1957;
More Irish Families, 1982 and The
Surnames of Ireland, 1985), very little original
and sustained research has been carried out on the
origins, meaning, ethnic diversity, distribution and
geographical expression of Irish family names. This
ongoing Atlas project will hopefully both
augment and encourage research on this important theme in
Irish cultural studies.

The completion of this stage of the Atlas
project has involved much teamwork and cooperation from
many people and many disciplines. I would like to thank
Professor Keith Sidwell, Director/Chair of the
Documents of Ireland Committee for his care
and commitment. A special word of thanks to Project
Manager, Ms. Margaret Lantry for all her patience,
consideration and technical expertise. My thanks also to
all the members of the Committee and to colleagues in the
Department of Geography. The project could not have been
completed without the sterling work of two dedicated
graduate research assistants: Ms. Almar Barry who worked
so tirelessly for the first year or more on the project
and Ms. Millie Glennon who has been so dedicated in
shepherding the project all the way through. My thanks too
to graduate assistants Ms. Joanne McCarthy and Ms. Elaine
Cullinane for their hard work on the names. Mr. David
Joyce is our skilled IT co-ordinator who has integrated
the database records and map files most expertly.
Cartographer, Mr. Michael Murphy worked his usual magic
with numerous mapping requests. I would also like to thank
Mr. Charlie Roche who had the patience and craft to
transform ‘a paper landscape’ of
parishes, baronies and counties into a digital mapping
framework. My sincere thanks to both Ms. Orla O'Sullivan
and Ms. Suzanne O'Sullivan for all their good secretarial
work and to Ms. Rose Walsh, Ms. Noreen McDowell and Mr.
Brendan Dockery for administrative assistance. Dr. Neil
Buttimer and Kenneth Nicholls were, as always, most
helpful as was Dr. Jim McLaughlin. A very special word of
thanks to my institutional collaborator at the National
University of Ireland Galway, an t-Ollamh Máirín Ní
Dhonnchada for both her scholarship and her generosity.
Finally, thanks to Ms. Vera Ryan for all her help and
support.

The Atlas of Family Names in Ireland
(originally entitled Atlas of Irish
Names) is a modest project currently being
undertaken in University College Cork's, Geography
Department. Using GIS inspired computer-based maps of
data from both the so-called ‘1659
Census’ and Griffith's Valuation, an
historical atlas of the principal surnames of Ireland is
currently being constructed at barony and civil parish
scales respectively. However, lurking behind this
in-house mapping venture is a less modest agenda.
Combining evidence from both first (Christian) names and
second names (surnames) as well as from placenames, this
wider research agenda seeks, through the lenses of these
names, to provide a greater geographical understanding
of patterns of immigration, settlement and cultural
transformation and assimilation since the end of the
first millennium to the present. This section provides
an introduction to the rationale for both the Atlas and
this wider research agenda. The reader/viewer should
note that only a small sample of the Atlas maps are
presently on-line.

Many countries are characterised by not only
complicated geological and settlement histories but also
by highly uneven, layered and contested symbolic
landscapes. Placenames, first names and surnames
constitute very distinctive and integral components of a
country's symbolic universe. And to the delight of the
geographer, such names—given their embedded local
qualities—are amenable to detailed mapping—as in the
Atlas project—and to distributional analysis. In
addition, the naming of individual places and people and
the perpetuation of such names in various forms over
time and space provide a powerful memory bank for and of
a culture. Excavating such a memory bank of names allows
the scholar to explore hidden and often undocumented
social and cultural processes, which in Evans's apt
phrase often escape the net of official history.
(1) Names provide very important clues to questions of
colonisation, conflict, conquest, accommodation and
assimilation.

In this Atlas research project, attention will be
specifically focused on the first names and second names
of Ireland in the past millennium. The analysis of
placenames is another day's work, although there is a
strong interlacing of family and placenames and some of
these interconnections will be touched on briefly in the
conclusion. To provide a scaffolding for the discussion
it is argued that for the past 850 years or so the
forging of Ireland's symbolic universes has seen an
ongoing and oscillating battle, conducted mainly between
two powerful hegemonic forces: that of the
Celtic/Gaelic/Irish and that of the
Germanic/British/English-speaking/writing traditions.

Part I looks at the origins and consequences of these
battles and encounters for patterns of first names and
the creation of second names. Part II explores the
geographical transformations in second names consequent
on the clash of these two hegemonic forces. Part III
addresses issues of attrition, mediation and hybridity
by exploring the changing geography of the
‘O’ and ‘Mac’
forms amongst Irish surnames. In all three sections, the
evidence from seventeenth-century data sources (mainly
written in English)—and especially that of the
‘1659 Census’—are used as a crucial
vantage point from which to view and chart the ebb and
flow of naming patterns as key signifiers of change,
conquest, adaptation, transformation and revival. Irish
language-sources and discourses are equally crucial.
Unravelling the territorial domains of first and second
names, therefore, is only part of the story. Complex
linguistic terrains and interfaces and competing
terrains of discourse must also be traversed and
addressed. And just as the sources provide narrow,
uneven and darkened windows on the past, so in this
venture I must select, emphasise and obscure to tell my
story.

The so-called ‘1659 Census’ provides
a unique vista of Ireland at one of the most pivotal
points in Irish political and cultural history. (3)
Apart from providing a detailed, almost island-wide
picture of settlement, ethnic groups and population
distributions in the mid-seventeenth century, it also
facilitates both a retrospective reconstruction of
ethnic patterns of settlement created in earlier
centuries as well as providing a crucial benchmark
against which to measure later cultural transformations
in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Inspired by William Petty's obsessive concern with the
ratio of Irish to English in each barony and county, a
most crucial component of the
‘Census’ is the listing of the
principal family names at the end of each baronial
entry. Unfortunately the returns from counties Cavan,
Galway, Mayo, Tyrone and Wicklow as well as parts of
Cork and Meath are missing. Otherwise the
‘Census’ records for every other
county and barony the specific numerical importance of
each family name classified as
‘Irish’, from the most numerous down
to the family names which were enumerated at least five
times in the poll-tax barony lists. It is unlikely that
any other European country has a seventeenth-century
record of such geographical richness in relation to the
number and importance of such a range of family
surnames. Whatever about its uniqueness, this baronial
listing of principal Irish family names has provided an
essential anchor for this Atlas project.

For example, this listing of surnames allows the
researcher to identify and map the distribution of the
descendants of the Anglo-Norman settlers who are
increasingly known as the ‘Old
English’ by the mid-seventeenth century.
Surnames included here are Barry, Brannagh, Browne,
Burke, Butler, Croke, Fitzgerald, Fitzmaurice,
Fitzsimon(s), Nagle, Power, Redmond, Roche, Russell and
Tyrrell. All these surnames are included in the Atlas
project. Figure 1, therefore, seeks to map the relative
distribution of the Gaelic and Old English surnames in
1660. (4) What is revealed is a whole series of
territorial polarisations and gradations in the
distribution of family names. The ‘Old
English’ Pale area is confirmed with the
Boyne valley as a crucial axis. In sharp contrast, the
strength of the population with Gaelic surnames over
much of Louth, South Dublin, North Wexford and most
particularly Kildare is striking. The mid-seventeenth
century surname evidence also confirms the spread of
medieval settlement and culture by the Anglo-Normans in
south-east Ireland. Outside of the north-west and the
south-west of the province and the hills of Tipperary,
Figure 1 also illustrates the strength of Norman naming
patterns over much of Munster. But what this map fails
to reveal is the subtle gradations in the forms of the
Anglo-Norman names as they work their way inland and
westwards into such highly Gaelicised lands as North
Kerry, not to speak of the naming and cultural
permutations that characterize Connaught.

1. Fig. 1: Distribution of Gaelic and Old English
surnames in 1660

The strength of the Gaelic tradition so close to Cork
City is another striking feature of Figure 1.
(Viewers/readers will note that Figures 1 to Figure 7
are attached to the end of this Section II). Indeed the
Gaelic hearthland of the southwest is as clear and as
extensive in 1660 as it was in 1260. The inland Gaelic
worlds of Laois-Offaly and its borderlands is also made
clear as is the weak Norman surname imprint in the
wetter lands of North Connaught, Northwest Leinster and
all of Ulster, exclusive of East Down and Antrim. East
and North Cork, North Kerry, most of Limerick,
mid-Tipperary and South Laois as well as all the lands
bordering the North Leinster Anglo-Norman core
constitute a middle ‘marchland’ zone
where the most coveted lands were fought over by Norman
and Gaelic and where, as Jones Hughes has argued, (5)
the deepest levels of assimilation between the two
traditions emerged. In short, Figure 1 confirms both the
great regions of ‘the Irishry’ as
they were known in the later Middle Ages as well as the
regional diversity, demographic power and resilience of
Old English worlds as they persisted into the first half
of seventeenth-century Ireland.

Other questions can also be asked of the ‘1659
Census’ and associated data-sources relating
to levels of assimilation as between the ethnic
‘Irish’ and the ethnic ‘Old
English’ by the mid-seventeenth century. The
myth that the Normans became more Irish than the
Irish themselves became deeply embedded in the
Irish psyche and Irish historiography after the
mid-seventeenth century. (6) Evidence from the hearth
money records as well as the ‘Census’
is helpful in testing the validity of this long-assumed
pattern of acculturation which emphasised the capacity
of Gaelic Irish culture to assimilate and incorporate
the culture of the descendants of the medieval settlers
known as the Anglo-Normans.

One of the most comprehensive and most accessible of
the county hearth-tax records is that edited for Co.
Tipperary by Laffan. (7) In these records, not only are
the surnames specified but so also in magnificent detail
are the Christian/first names. Again it is not too
difficult a task to distinguish between the Gaelic
surnames and those of Old English ancestry. Likewise one
can map parish by parish the first or Christian name
patterns associated with the descendants of the two
ethnic groups. And these hearth money records can be
compared with specific materials in the ‘1659
Census’.

If the thesis or myth that the Normans became more
Irish than the Irish themselves is correct, one might
expect that over the more than four hundred years of
conflict, interaction and assimilation between the two
groups, at least some of the Old English families would
come to carry first names which had been borrowed from
the Gaelic naming stock. The first name evidence from
the hearth money records for Tipperary emphatically
denies that such a process of acculturation occurred.
Apart from a small number of smaller or upland parishes
(but interestingly including the parish of Whitechurch
where Seathrún Céitinn / Geoffrey Keating was born), the
families of Anglo-Norman descent stubbornly retained
their own naming patterns modelled on a
European/universal saints naming heritage. Thus, in over
90% of the parishes of Tipperary, there is a 95-100%
retention of such saints' names by these families.
Amongst the Old English of mid-seventeenth century
Tipperary, Christian first names such as Alice, William,
Nicholas, Edward, Claire, Richard, David, Isobel,
Hanora, Catherine and Henry ruled supreme. The
descendants of the Anglo-Normans may have borrowed
freely when it came to matters of poetry, song, music
and indeed language. But they certainly yielded very
little symbolic territory in their use of Christian
first names. And when it came to issues of property in
land or the Church or the professions generally it is,
likewise, doubtful if they yielded much ground.

This conclusion is further confirmed when we examine
first naming patterns amongst the descendants of the
‘Old Irish’ i.e. amongst the Ryans,
Meaghers, O'Kennedys and O'Dwyers (all mapped in the
Atlas project) and others of ‘Gaelic’
stock. In contrast to the solidity and county-wide
consistency of the Old English first names, the pattern
of Christian names amongst the Gaelic families (Figure
2) very closely mirrors the underlying property and
political structures. In the North and West of Tipperary
where Gaelic lords had remained in situ
during the medieval period or, as in the case of the
O'Kennedys, had expanded their domains during the period
known as the Gaelic resurgence, Gaelic first naming
patterns had remained most intact. Here, names such as
More (Mór), Hugh, Owny (úna), Sheely (Síle), Dermot and
Teige were in a majority. Yet even in these
‘Gaelic’ regions, assimilation to
medieval European-derived naming patterns is still
noticeable with a 10% to 20% adoption rate. Nevertheless
the resilience and strength of Gaelic resistance
is epitomised by a number of frontier parishes such as
that of the O'Fogartys of Inch in the Thurles region and
that of the McGraths of Whitechurch near Cahir. As with
the intermixed Irish/Old English land-ownership
patterns, first naming patterns are transitional in
character amongst the Gaelic families across the middle
bandolier of territory from Ikerrin in the northeast to
Clanwilliam in the southwest. (8) But in South and East
Tipperary, especially in the baronies of Iffa and Offa
East and West, Middlethird and Slieveardagh—in a
powerful Anglo-Norman zone of colonisation and property
control, under the aegis of the Butler
overlordship—the deeper feudalisation of the
‘Old Irish’ population and their
naming patterns is clearcut. In many of these
south-eastern parishes less than 50% of the
‘Gaelic’ families carry the more
traditional Gaelic first names. In this more urbanised
and manoralised village world, first naming patterns
amongst the ‘Gaelic’ families were
modelled much more on those of the Anglo-Norman lords
and their principal tenants. Not only had the Normans
not become more Irish than the Irish themselves;
rather the cultural tide was running in the opposite
direction in sixteenth—and
seventeenth—century Ireland with the adoption of
Old English naming patterns by families of Gaelic
descent. However it is also relevant to note the large
transitional zone in the middle of the county where
Gaelic and Norman cultural forms met and fused to a
greater extent. Cultural hybridisation is also a feature
of late medieval/early modern Tipperary.

2. Fig. 2: Patterns of Christian names amongst Gaelic
families

The ‘1659 Census’ does not provide
the same richness of data on Christian/first names. Yet
its detailed listing of the first and second names of
the highest poll-tax payers, the
‘tituladoes’, i.e. the gentry, the
professionals, the merchants, is also highly
instructive. Again it is not difficult to distinguish
the ‘Old Irish’ gentry names from
those of the Old English and one can map, as in Figure
3, the extent to which the old Gaelic elites retain
their ancient first names or have adopted European-wide
medieval patterns of Christian names. One can test also
the reliability of the results by looking at a
comparison of the Tipperary patterns based in the first
instance on the very detailed hearth money records and
secondly on the less comprehensive gentry/'titulado'
naming patterns in the ‘1659 Census’.
A very high correlation between the two sources is
evident in the three naming regimes revealed for Co.
Tipperary—the more Gaelic north and west, the hybrid
middle belt and the very ‘feudalised’
south-eastern zone. This latter region is seen to extend
over much of lowland Leinster, presents a sharp frontier
to the Gaelic world of Ulster and its borderlands in
Leinster and Connaught, extends into Normanised
Roscommon and swings south to reveal the cultural zones
of high assimilation to medieval naming patterns amongst
the Gaelic families of both East and North Cork and
North Kerry. The long recognised frontier zone between
Desmond North Kerry and Gaelic South Kerry is replicated
on this map—a Gaelic zone of continuity which extends
into West and South-West Cork with again (as in
Tipperary) a classic hybrid marchland zone running
north-south in mid Cork from Liscarroll to Kinsale.
Likewise pockets of greater resistance to
European naming patterns are revealed in parts of the
Midlands, the Decies in Waterford and in North Wexford
(and probably much of Wicklow). County Clare reveals
mixed, if more Gaelic-naming, patterns which probably
weakened as this zone extended into lowland Galway and
Mayo. However, the most striking feature of Figure 4 is
the emphatic regional distinctiveness of Ulster and
adjacent borderlands. Nowhere else does the pattern of
Christian names remain so faithful to its ancestral
roots. Nowhere else in Ireland was Gaelic culture more
coherent, more conserving, more enduring.

3. Fig. 3: Retention of ancient first-names or
medieval Christian names by the old Gaelic
families

Overall, therefore the first name evidence from
mid-seventeenth century Ireland as a whole reveals how
diverse and regionalised Irish cultural expressions had
been at this time. And it is clear that over the greater
part of the island (excluding Ulster) medieval Christian
naming patterns had taken a deep hold—a feature even
more pronounced amongst women where Christian names
reveal a greater shift towards the more fashionable
European first names than even those of the men. For
example, in Co. Tipperary of the mid 1660s, fewer than
20% of the women's first names belong to the older
Gaelic naming tradition. The Anglo-Norman colonisation
and the associated great increase in continental
religious foundations had clearly a profound long-term
transformational effect on culture and naming patterns.

This is not to argue, however that the more universal
saints names had not penetrated into Irish life before
1169. The Christian names Michael and Paul began to
arrive after 1020 while Edmund, John, Margaret, Maria
and Nicholas also make more fleeting appearances before
1120. Yet there is no doubt but that the full
introduction of the great swathe of continental saint
names awaited the coming of the Anglo-Norman knights and
their religious orders.

Likewise this is not to argue that the first naming
tradition of the Gaelic population had remained carved
in stone in the pre-Norman period. To explore this world
in greater depth the use of Irish-language sources is
essential. ó Corráin and Maguire have written that the
early Irish had an extraordinary variety of personal
names. (9) As many as 12,000 such names are
documented in early Irish sources, many of which fell
out of fashion at a very early stage. Over the period
770 to 1120, the Annals of Ulster alone record the use
of well over 1000 individual, admittedly mainly
aristocratic/royal, first names. (10) Analysing the
composition and distribution of these names over 50 year
intervals from 770 to 1120 provides a useful initial
strategy to interpret continuity and change in Irish
Gaelic personal naming patterns in that highly
significant period and beyond. As many as 416 first
names are recorded in the Annals of Ulster for the
period 770-819; the average for the subsequent six 50
year periods to 1120 is 258. The greatest range and the
greatest number of first names emanate therefore, from
the earliest period analysed. However equally relevant
is the apparently high attrition rate in the names
recorded between 770 and 819—as many as 280 (67.3%) of
these first names are not recorded in use in the next 50
year period from 820 to 869. In fact, over the whole
period from 770 to 1120, 638 first names are recorded as
being in use for one period only and of these rarely
recorded names, over 30%, ‘died out’
in this period 820-869 alone. Indeed 48.3% of the first
names recorded in the Annals of Ulster between 770 and
819 do not recur in subsequent periods. The attrition
rate for first names for all of the other subsequent
periods ranges from 24.5% from 820 to 915 to 36.9% from
1070 to 1120 with the average set at 28.5%. The most
dramatic transformation in both the number and variety
of first names seems to take place in the ninth
century.

Powerful continuities in first name use are also
attested in the Annals of Ulster (AU). At least 18 first
names are recorded as occurring in all eight 50 year
periods to 1120, close on another 20 for all of seven 50
year periods, over 20 for six periods, close on 30 for
five; 50 first names are recorded for at least four 50
year periods, over 70 for 3 and over 150 names are
recorded as recurring in at least two of the selected 50
year periods. Some of the great enduring names are Aed,
Aengus, Cathal, Cellach, Colmán, Conchobar, Congalach,
Cormac, Diarmait, Domnall, Donnchad, Flann,
Muirchertach, Muiredach, Murchad, Niall, Ruadrí and Tadc
(see appendices).

O'Brien's frequency list of the commonest names found
in the period 400-900/1000 (both the latter are given as
terminal dates) provide both a useful comparison and
contrast. (11) The actual number of names (1200) he
classified is very close to the AU total discussed here.
Ten of O'Brien's ‘top 20’ are
replicated in the AU list, led in both cases by Aed
(250) and also including Cormac (100), Domnall (100),
Flann (100), Cellach (90), Muireadach (90), Colmán (71),
Diarmait (70), Conchobhar (60) and Murchad (54). By way
of contrast ten of O'Brien's other most frequent names
are displaced in the AU list by names such as áengus,
Cathal, Congalach, Donnchad, Muirchertach, Niall,
Ruaidrí and Tadc. However, with the exception of áengus,
all of the latter names do appear in O'Brien's list,
usually at a frequency of 30 to 40. The significant
differences between the two lists relate mainly to two
rather different chronologies, the wider range of
sources used by O'Brien and the significant shift in
fashions of naming after 900AD.

Of these strongly enduring names, Aed (later anglicised
Hugh) is as equally and massively popular in the twelfth
century as in the eighth century and becomes one of the
great Gaelic revival names in the late medieval period.
(12) áengus, while a strong name in the first period,
is gradually losing ground in the tenth and eleventh
centuries, in contrast to Cathal, which is equally
strong both before and after 970. Both these first names
were to anchor surname forms in later centuries.
Cellach, on the other hand, though remaining popular is
only recorded half as often in the tenth- and
eleventh-century Annals, although it again was to become
a strong surname. Colmán shows a similar weakness as a
first name in later centuries of the first millennium.
Conchobar is one of the great consistent names, as
powerful in the eleventh and twelfth centuries as in the
eighth and ninth centuries to become one of the great
first and second names over the second millennium (see
Figure 4 below). In contrast, Congalach is again only
half as powerful after 970 than it is before. Cormac is
equally becoming much less fashionable in the later
centuries of the first millennium but nevertheless
survives to anchor a key Irish surname (see Atlas
Extract, VI) and first name. The name Conn is five times
more likely to appear in the AU before 970 than
afterwards but is revived to become the cornerstone of
the key surname ó Cuinn/ (O)Quin(n). Both Diarmait and
Donnchad were the other great consistent first names
(and second names) equally popular in all centuries. In
contrast, while already a powerful name from at least
the eighth century, Domnall grows three times as
fashionable after 970 to become one of the most
influential first and second names, showing further
strength in the late medieval era of re-gaelicisation.
Flann takes the opposite path with a sharp burst of
popularity after 970 (see high kings of the same name)
but after this time is less often recorded yet it
becomes the root of a highly poplar surname
O'Floinn/(O')Flynn. The name Muirchertach is rather rare
with five recordings only by 920. Subsequently it
becomes highly favourable with close on 80 recorded
occurrences in the AU between 920 and 1120. Later on it
becomes an anchor surname. Muiredach is another of the
very strong stable names across all these centuries
while Murchad, in contrast, is almost twice as popular
after 970 as before. Niall, while remaining fashionable,
dips somewhat out of favour in the latter half of the
11th century. However, the much larger sample of first
names for the Annals of the Four Masters shows Niall
continuing to function at a select, steady rate in the
later Middle Ages. The name Ruadrí is three times as
likely to occur after 1020 than before while the name
Tadc gathers power as the centuries pass to become one
of, if not, the greatest name of the regaelicisation
period of the later Middle Ages.

4. Fig. 4: Conchobhar as a first name

The name Pátraic/Patrick presents a striking and
challenging scenario. The name slowly gathers momentum
up to 970 and is afterwards three times as popular.
However the epic story of the cultural geography of the
name Patrick is still to be researched and written. Mac
Lysaght, using late medieval/early modern sources, notes
that while Patrick was not very commonly linked with
Gaelic surnames before the sixteenth century, it is
still tenth in popularity as a Christian name for that
century and is equally as popular amongst the families
of Anglo-Norman origin.13 In medieval times, Patrick is
still amongst the twenty-five most enumerated first
names in English language sources but not as strong in
sources such as the Annals where Giollapatrick (later
surname Gil/Fitzpatrick) is the more popular form. The
hearth money records for Armagh shows the name Patrick
already deeply rooted in this north-eastern region by
the mid-seventeenth century. (14) It is also clear that
the name Patrick had earlier assumed great popularity in
Western Scotland and its islands and becomes a
significant first name amongst the settler communities
who came into Ulster in the seventeenth century.
However, the likely greatest surge in the use of Patrick
may be linked to the growth of both St. Patrick's Day as
the key national festival and to the whole nationalist
awakening from the late eighteenth century onwards.
Nevertheless, a thorough analysis of its geographical
growth in Ireland (and further afield) would provide
critical insights about phases and patterns of cultural
transformation across Ireland and beyond.

Other very popular names in later eras such as Mary,
Brigit and Brian only begin to become fashionable in the
late tenth and early eleventh centuries. Aedán, now
popular again, fades out before 970 in the Annals of
Ulster while Fergus remains a solid minority name right
through the seven periods studied and undergoes a
further resuscitation in the regaelicisation phase of
the later Middle Ages. Conall, Fiachra, Fergal and
Guaire appear to die out rather early in the AU. The
Viking name lmar gathers strength from the mid eighth
century and peaks from the late eight to the tenth
centuries. The Nordic name Ragnall is also tenacious
throughout six of the 50 year periods after 820 and
Ualgarg and Sitriuc even more so. Less enduring
Nordic-derived first names include Artur, Barid,
Bruadur, Gofraid and Sigfrith. The Irish-derived name
forms Dubgall and Glún-Iarainn also become popular.
Lochlainn becomes quite a fashionable first name from
the beginning of the eleventh century onwards. By then
it is clear that Scandinavian-Irish names have long been
assimilated into the Gaelic-Irish tradition. In contrast
a large number of fairly important early names cease to
be recorded after 920 or 980; these include Artgal,
Colgu, Congal, Crunnmael, Eochu, Forbasach and
Suairlech. Overall, over 40% of the stock of first names
in use c.1120 in the AU were already in existence prior
to 820 and each subsequent 50 year period to 1120 adds
from 8% to 12% to this stock.

Mapping all these first names across all the 50 year
periods from 720 to 1120 reveals a number of key general
trends. Firstly, quite a number of names such as Ailill,
Bran, Congal practically disappear from these Annals
after 820 or 870. There is severe attrition on many
long-established names at this time. Secondly, even the
very strongest names such as Aed, Cellach, Cathal,
Conchobhar, Diarmait and Máel Sechnaill also suffer a
temporary decline—sometimes severely as in the case of
Cathal—after 870. The most pronounced period of
decline in the strengths of all these key first names
lies between 920 and 970, followed in many cases by a
clear record of resurgence for the late tenth and
eleventh centuries onwards. Thirdly a number of names
buck this downward trend between 820 and 970 and
actually continue to grow in popularity; these include
Colum, Domnall, Niall, Muirchertach, Pátraic and
Flaithbertach. This same period (820-970) sees the
growth of new Nordic names such as ímar, Ragnall and
Sitriuc. The above combination of names is strongly in
the ascendancy from 820 to 870; older first names
gradually regain the upperhand afterwards but there is a
kind of equilibrium between old and new name forms from
870 to 1020. Fourthly, there is clearly a resurgence of
long-established names in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries and some names that had almost disappeared
from the record reappear. These include Bran, Cernach,
Meal Dúin and Ruaidrí. And fifthly the Christianisation
of first names mainly occurs after 970.

There is thus evidence of both strong continuities and
striking fluidities and discontinuities. Four out of ten
of first names in use c.800 are still in use c.1100. Yet
six out of ten of the total number of first names are
recorded for only one of the 50-year periods in the AU.
Overall there appears to be a significant phase of
cultural transformation expressed between c.820 and
c.970, followed by a major resurgence of long
established old Gaelic names after 970. Then follows a
trend towards greater stabilising of first names after
1000. This stability may also be strongly related to the
spread of hereditary surnames and the consequent
reduction in the need for a greater variety of first
name forms.

There are some parallels in the later impact of the
Norman conquest in the high Middle Ages which depressed
the status of local Gaelic names and saw the powerful
spread of universal saints names as first names. For
example, ó Cúiv has noted the early adoption of Seán
(John), Tomás, William and Eamonn by Old Irish families
from the middle of the thirteenth century onwards. (15)
This in turn was followed, especially in the zones of
greatest regaelicisation, by a powerful resurgence from
the late fourteenth century onwards of names such as
Aed, Tadc, Donnchad, Diarmait and Conchobar and a less
powerful but sharp revival of names such as Aengus and
Fergal and even an archaic name like Cairpre. However,
as we have seen from the Tipperary hearth money records
and the 1659 Census, the balance of power and fashion
had swung decisively back to universal/European patterns
of naming by the seventeenth century.

Like in other West European countries, the use of
Christian saints' names as first names in Ireland was a
relatively slow process. Names such as Caemgen (Kevin)
were not very popular and many of the
‘Máel’-type names (meaning
‘shorn, bald’) are not religious
names per se. Colum and Pátraic are five
times as popular after 920 as before while names like
Máel Pátraic and Máel Ciaráin are both weakly expressed
from 820 onwards. In contrast Máel Brigte is more than
twice as often recorded in the AU before 920 than after
while Máel Sechnaill undergoes a major blossoming from
820 on, strengthening further after 920. Máel Muire is
twice as popular after 970 than in preceding periods
while Máel Petair is weakly recorded after 920. Máel
Coluim is five times more popular after 970 than before
as is Máel lsu. The great series of ‘Gilla
(meaning ’servant') plus a saint's name',
headed by Gilla Pátraic and including Gilla Brigte,
Gilla Caemgen, Gilla Coluim, Gilla Chríst, Gilla
Mo-cholmóc and Gilla Muire only emerge powerfully after
970. There is no doubt but that the eleventh century is
the key century for the florescence of this
‘Gilla’ naming tradition and
represents a peak in the use of Christian saints' names
as first names in a Gaelic form. Subsequently
‘Mac Giolla’ linked to a specific
saint's name was to constitute at least 50 new surname
forms. However, after c.1200 it is the Anglo-Norman
conquest and settlement which adds—as in Norman
England—most dramatically to the corpus of Christian
first names in Ireland, perhaps adding a further 180
such first names to the Irish mosaic.

Mac Lysaght has provided one measure of these
transformations in first names from his analysis of
sources such as the Civil Survey, the Books of Survey
and Distribution and the Cromwellian Certificates. In
the mid-seventeenth century, John was the most popular
male first name, accounting for approximately 9% of the
sample. Thomas, William, James and Edmund followed, each
accounting for about five percent. The break with the
earlier medieval period (up to 1169) is, therefore,
quite sharp. The old Gaelic names Connor, Dermot,
Donough, Rory and Teig, only occupy a third category,
each accounting in turn for nearly three percent of
the Catholic population. (16) Equally popular
were Hugh or Ee (Aedh) and Daniell (or Donell). A little
less prolific were Patrick, Richard and Nicholas. There
follows Maurice, Edmund and Robert which were each about
equal to the Gaelic Brian and Murrough. Mac Lysaght
concludes that the list of these first names which each
reach at least one per cent of the total includes
Andrew, Christopher, Francis, Garrett, Henry, Loughlin,
Mahon, Peter, Piers and Terlagh. These figures suggest a
ratio of at least two-to-one by the mid-seventeenth
century in favour of the Anglo-Norman derived first
names for men as against the older Gaelic forms.

The enumerated tituladoes of the 1659 Census allows
some regional breakdown of this island-wide pattern.
Amongst the enumerated old Irish gentry for Ulster,
Donall and Patrick come joint-second to John, while
Hugh, Phelim, Connor, Brian, Terlagh, Cahir, Rory and
Niall are also strongly represented. In fact of the top
ten first names of the old Gaelic elites of Ulster seven
were from the Gaelic tradition and only three (John,
Edmund and Thomas) from the medieval. In contrast,
amongst the Irish gentry of Connaught only Bryen and
Patrick figure in the top ten with John and Thomas
dominant with 9% each of the total followed by William,
Edmund, Nicholas, Robert and Richard.

The situation was very different amongst the new
settler gentry of Ulster. John (21.3%) remains the
dominant first name followed strongly by William
(11.9%), James (10.5%), Robert (8.0%) and Thomas (7.0%).
Richard, George, Henry, the striking name Alexander
(Alasdair) and equally fashionable Irish/Scottish/Gaelic
name of Hugh complete the ten most popular names and
together constitute a further 20%. Apart from Hugh,
Thomas and the ever popular John, no other first name is
shared with the top ten names of the old Irish gentry
while names such as Archbald, Arthur, Charles, Cromwell,
Gustavus, Jason, Jacob and Joshua, through to Samuel,
Theophilius and Tobias bespeak the new political and
religious order.

Below the gentry level, a sample inspection of settler
names amongst the 1641 depositions from the counties of
Armagh, Queen's County (Laois) and Waterford shows that
seven first names accounted for almost two-thirds of the
total record. (17) John leads with 21%, followed by
Thomas (12%) and William (10%) and the following four
names—Richard, James, Henry and Robert—combine to
make a further 20%. A further twelve names, headed by
Nicholas and concluded by David add a further 18%. The
remainder, which occur four times or less include such
wonderful names as Isaak, Jasper, Job, Marmaduke,
Rowland, Tristan and Zelopheled. At the urban settler
level, very little difference is to be noted. For
example in Cork City John and Thomas lead the way
followed by Richard and William with George, Edmund and
James and Robert also very popular amongst the new urban
elite.

The 1659 Census has little to tell us about incoming
women's first names. Only South-West Cork yields a
sample of its secrets with Mary (6), Anne (6) and
Elizabeth (4) the most popular with names such as
Sophia, Hester, Abigail, Charity, Susan and Grace also
represented. The 1641 depositions—given the much
greater sample of women's names—is a much more
fruitful source. These depositions comprise, for the
most part, the sworn statements of Protestant settlers
who had endured the Irish Rising of 1641-42. Again
taking the women settlers from County Armagh, Queen's
County and Waterford, Elizabeth is the clear first with
21% followed by Margaret (11%), Mary (10%), Ann(e) (9%),
Jane (8%), Joanne (7.6%) and Alice (6.5%). Katherine and
Ellinor score at 5% while Dorothy, Ellen, Grace and
Isabel are each returned 2-3% of the time. Names such as
Charity, Eliza, Judith, Madeleine and Joyce speak to new
cultural impulses, as both the reality and perception of
‘Protestant’ Christian names as
opposed to ‘Catholic’ forms takes
deep root.

The hearth money records for Co. Tipperary offers a
contrasting picture of women's first names amongst both
the Old Irish and the descendants of the Anglo-Normans.
The leading name by far is Margaret (23.5%) followed by
Joan (12.8%), Katherine (10.5%) and Ellen (9.0%) with
Mary and Honor joint fifth. Eilís, More (Mór), Sheila
(Síle) and Ellinor complete the top ten first names for
women. Elizabeth, first among settler names, is
joint-twelfth with the strong ancient Irish name úna.
And within Co. Tipperary the Gaelic first names such as
Mór, Síle and úna are more strongly represented in
North-West Tipperary amongst key families such as the
O'Kennedys, Gleesons, Ryans and O'Dwyers. The pattern of
pre-planter first names amongst the women of
mid-seventeenth century Co. Dublin, while very similar
to Tipperary, does reveal subtle regional differences as
well. (18) Margaret still heads the list but is
followed strongly by Katherine. Mary (third) is in a
much stronger position. Elizabeth is also more
fashionable as are Anastasia and Sarah. Distinctive Pale
first names include Rose, Marie, Dorothy and Alison.
There are very few Gaelic first names left amongst the
women of South Co. Dublin. Owney (the anglicised version
of úna) occurs; Brigid is rare while Finola also makes
an appearance. By 1652, the universal saints' names
brought in in the medieval period are dominant in the
Pale and the old Gaelic first names have been eroded
dramatically from this symbolic landscape.

The extent to which both the intensification of Scots
Presbyterian colonisation and settlement in the second
half of the seventeenth and earlier part of the
eighteenth century, and the late eighteenth and
especially nineteenth century evangelical revivals
strengthened as well as narrowed the range of Old
Testament type first names amongst the descendants of
the settler community still needs to be thoroughly
researched. Likewise the degree to which these naming
patterns were Gaelicised—if at all—needs further
exploration. We do know that some Johnstons become
MacShanes, but this appears to be a relatively rare
process. What is also clear is that on the Irish
Catholic side of the equation, John becomes
emphatically more dominant, doubling in popularity from
the nine percent in the mid-seventeenth century to 18%
by the mid-twentieth century. Patrick leaps into second
place over the same period and is six times more
fashionable in the mid-twentieth century as in the
mid-seventeenth century. (19) Likewise the two key
saints' names of Michael and Joseph emerge from the
shadows of the middle ages to become the third and
seventh most popular names respectively by mid-twentieth
century. It is also interesting to note that the range
of men's first names has also narrowed over the three
hundred years between c.1650 and c.1950. In the
mid-seventeenth century, the top ten comprised 44% of
the total; by c.1950 the first ten names now comprised
68% of the total. This pattern replicates wider European
trends in the narrowing of the naming stocks. (20)

The devotional revolution and the resurgence of the
Catholic Church combined with another great Gaelic
revival phase which gathered power in the later
nineteenth century and had peaked by the mid twentieth
century has resulted in a whole range of both saints'
names and old Irish first names being resurrected:
Christopher and Martin are striking additions amongst
the men and a new blossoming of names such as Aoife,
Fiona, Gormlaith, Nuala, Orla, Sheila, Sineád and úna
has taken place amongst women's first names. Such names
transcend the later Middle Ages to reach back to the
most fashionable women's names in the pre-Norman period.
The name Mary—already quite strong in the Pale
region of the seventeenth century—now becomes the
most favoured woman's first name. The depth of the
cultural divergence between such women's first names as
revealed in the mid-seventeenth century data sources and
those of the mid-twentieth century is indeed immense. A
vast journey over a complex cultural terrain has been
negotiated and traversed over the intervening three
centuries. However great continuities also
prevailed—and the most enduring feature of the
Irish fashion in naming is the continued use of the
forename in the creation of the very distinctive Irish
second or surname system. And when we map the surnames
from the 1659 Census, the great and most geographically
extensive names—the Cormacks/McCormacks, the
Connors/O'Connors, the Donnells/O'Donnells, Dermots and
McDermots and the Donoghs/McDonoghs—echo back
across the centuries to some of the key first names
(Figure 4).

In the 1992 specially revised edition of Woulfe's
Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall—Irish names and
surnames, the Irish Genealogical Foundation
provide a new index which lists c.11,500 Irish surnames
in their English-language forms. (21) This list both
reflects the Americanisation as well as the
anglicisation of Irish name forms and takes into account
the multiple renderings of the c.3700 surnames
documented by Woulfe in their original Irish language
versions. And close on one in seven of the names
discussed by Woulfe are themselves diminutives or
variations of other primary family surname forms.

Irish surnames, therefore, are diverse in number and
form and the linguistic heritage of English/British
colonisation means that most surnames—like the
placenames—have at the very minimum two forms—one in
Irish and one in English. A name like Mac Con Aonaigh
("son of the hound/warrior of the fair") ended up by the
late nineteenth century as McEnanny, McNeany, McAneany,
MacAneeny, MacAneny, MacEneany, MacNeney, MacNeany,
Conheeny, Cunneeny and twenty-seven other versions
including being (mis)translated as
‘Bird’ in Ulster and
‘Rabbitt’ in Connaught. (22) The
Atlas story of modern Irish surnames is therefore a
story of diversities, pluralities, multiplicities,
ambiguities, fluidities—a story of the wearing of many
masks and the use of many forms of dress and
address.

In the wider literature it is argued that Ireland
provides one of the earliest examples of hereditary
family surname formation in Europe, paralleling that of
Southern France, perhaps a century ahead of England and
clearly very different to countries like Lithuania,
where second names only emerged in the eighteenth
century and Iceland where the use of hereditary surnames
is not characteristic at all. (23) ó Cuív has pointed
out the difficulties of distinguishing between evolving
patronyms and hereditary surnames in early medieval
Ireland. (24) Nevertheless, an examination of both the
Annals of Ulster and the Annals of Inisfallen strongly
suggest that the key decades in which second names are
first used permanently lie on each side of 950. (25)

The originating phase for Irish hereditary surnames
seems to be the mid-tenth century. After 970-1000, there
is a great surge of new second name formations. A brief
survey of these two Annals—that of Ulster and
Inisfallen—between 920 and 1120 is instructive.
Whereas it would appear that less than four percent of
recorded surnames had originated before 970, c.12-15%
developed between 970 and 1019, a further c.25-28%
between 1020 and 1069 and the highest proportion
(c.30-33%) emerge between 1070 and 1120 and a further
23-25% originate in the 50 years after 1120. Thus, by
the end of the twelfth century hereditary surname
formation had spread among the elite classes in most
parts of the country and continued to spread downwards
amongst other groups. And after 1170 a very significant
crop of Anglo-Norman surnames also enters the records.
(26)

Correlating early surname formation with occupational
details highlights the significance of at least two
specific groups with powerful interests in the
hereditary principle. Royal families, other aristocratic
families and local lords intent on carving out
distinctive territorial domains, symbolised their status
and distinctiveness by the adoption of specific
surnames. They drew both a symbolic and geographical
boundary around themselves as members of the ruling
landed elites, thus forcing the discarded segments to
adopt other name formations. It is also relevant to note
that early surname formation did become a feature of the
key kin-groups attached to royal and aristocratic
households and military administrations including
castellans, stewards, brehons, bards, as well as
military officers on land or sea.

Equally significant was the formation of early surnames
amongst the ecclesiastical elites. Ireland appears to be
unique in Western Europe in that clerical families
developed their own genealogies (in
addition to compiling and preserving the secular
genealogies), thus stressing the centrality of the
hereditary principle amongst the mainly aristocratic
church families. One of the earliest and most powerful
groups to develop second permanent names were the
erenagh families—these deeply rooted custodians of
church/monastic lands, many of which survived in the
same parishes down to the nineteenth century. Lectors,
abbots and bishops also made their contribution to the
stock of surnames as did other related elites such as
the poets, historians and topographers. An acceleration
in both occupational specialisation and occupational
diversification after 1020 and especially after 1070
also added impetus to the solidification of distinctive
surnames (see Appendices).

At the time of the Nordic invasions, hereditary
surnames were not as yet in vogue in Ireland; but did
these Northerners also help to propagate the
‘Mac’ surname form in Ireland? The
distribution of the Scandinavian-Irish name—MacOtair
(Cotter)—is illustrated in the Atlas Abstract as is
MacSweeney. Certainly their Norman cousins helped to
strengthen this process after 1169 and confirm that by
the mid-twelfth century Irish surname formation was
almost invariably taking the ‘Mac’
form. Many Norman families assumed surnames of a Gaelic
form such as Mac Gerailt and Mac Uigilin. Mac Lysaght
observes that the majority of these such as Mac
Sherone ex Prendergast and Mac Ruddery ex Fitzsimon
are nearly extinct today as are various offshoots of
the Burkes. (27) Yet subsepts of the Burkes
survive as Mac David, Mac Philibin, Mac Gibbon, and Mac
Redmond. Likewise, as Mac Lysaght notes, the Bermingham
name often survives in the form of Mac Corish or Corish,
the Stauntons came to wear the mask of Mac Evilly, the
Archdeacons that of Mac Oda or Cody while the Nangles
are rendered as Costello (and in the past as Mac
Costello). (28) Woulfe has argued that the Nangles were
the first Normans to adopt the ‘Mac’
form as early as the late twelfth century. (29)
Subsequently quite a number of Norman families assumed
surnames of a Gaelic type and formed septs or subsepts
on the Gaelic model. Others were to perpetuate the
‘fils/Fitz’ form as demonstrated in
the Atlas Abstract for Fitzgerald. In addition Mac
Lysaght has identified over 80 Anglo-Norman surnames
which were formed from trades, employments, personal
characteristics and nationality and are represented in
medieval Irish records. These include Archer, Carpenter,
Draper, Ferriter, Fleming, Skinner, Tanner and Woodman.
Butler is another name of this type and its changing
distribution between c.1659 and c.1850 is shown in the
Atlas Abstract (Section VI online).

1. Fig. 5: Distribution of settler names in Ulster in
the mid-17th century

By 1500, Gaelic and Gaelicised Ireland was still an
expansive confident world and both the Irish language
and Irish surname forms predominated in such regions.
English speech and English name forms were then
concentrated on the enclave of the Pale and Dublin, a
few other key port-cities and regional pockets
elsewhere. By the early eighteenth century, in contrast,
the tide had turned dramatically in favour of the
English language and British culture and in favour of
anglicised surname forms. The Tudor, Cromwellian and
Williamite conquests had oppressed Gaelic Ireland and
the story of the beginnings of a linguistic conquest is
chronicled with ever increasing geographical precision
between the 1530s and the 1660s in a large number of
documents written in English. These begin with the
fiants of Henry VIII and of Elizabeth which provide in
extraordinary detail the name forms of many in the Irish
population over the sixteenth century. (30) The data on
first names and surnames grows stronger in the
seventeenth century via sources such as the 1641
Depositions and the hearth money records and culminate
in the key source for this paper—the 1659 Census. The
increasingly detailed manuscript maps of sixteenth and
seventeenth century Ireland likewise rendered key Irish
family names and their territories in English forms as
the rechristening of people and landscapes gathered
pace. Recognition of the significance of these
English-language based sources signals that the power to
narrate Ireland's story and its naming systems had
shifted dramatically by the seventeenth century.

Results from the computer-based mapping of the
principal Irish surnames enumerated in
‘1659’ indicates that over one-third
of these family names were rooted in a single barony and
were not prevalent elsewhere in Ireland. Another sixteen
per cent of these surnames were particular to two or
three adjacent baronies. Thus close on one half of the
large sample of principal Irish family names recorded in
the ‘1659 Census’, were highly
localized in distribution. Mac Lysaght has identified at
least 350 surnames of this type including, for example,
MacAteer for Tyrone, Culkin for Galway, Daffey and
Normoyle for Clare and Verling for Cork. (31)

There are then the great regional names, confined to a
single province and usually occupying two or three
adjacent counties. The O'Sullivans and MacCarthys in
Southwest Munster and the O'Dohertys and Gallaghers of
Northwest Ulster are examples in this category which
comprises a further 12% of the ‘1659’
total. Close on one third of the mapped surnames are
located over two or three provinces—names such as
Butler, Dillon, Dalton, Fitzpatrick, Fitzgerald,
Gormley, Fahey, Fallon, Donnelly, Doyle, Cantwell,
Crotty, Cullen, Egan, Healy, O'Hara, O'Rourke, O'Toole
and Russell. Finally we come to the
‘universal’ names found in all four
provinces—including such names as Brennan, (O) Brien,
Daly Kearney, Moore, and Smith as well as other great
patronymic family names such as O'Connor, O'Kelly and
Martin already discussed in Part I (see Figure 4).

And as early as 1659 not only the anglicisation but
also the fragmentation of Irish surname forms was well
on its way. Three surnames—that of Fitzmorris,
O'Brien and Morrogh/Murphy—are each rendered in at
least twelve different ways in the Census. A further 19
names—from Byrne and Clarke, through Curran and
Nolan to Ryan and O'Sullivan—are all rendered in
at least eight, and often up to eleven, variations. A
further 41 names from Duffy and Brennan onto Crowley and
McDonagh are rendered in five to seven ways, while an
additional 24 names including Brannagh and Cahill,
O'Riordan and O'Rourke, are returned in at least four
variant forms. The splintering of Irish cultural and
political formations is symbolised in the fracturing of
its surname forms as is internal differentiation in
naming patterns within one linguistic community.

The ‘1659 Census’ also allows us to
map the precise distribution of English and Scottish
settler names in the mid-seventeenth century. We are
still not fully certain how Petty managed to instruct
his clerks to make the crucial ethnic classification
which allowed them to distinguish between the
‘English’ (and Scots) surnames and
those of the ‘Irish’. The likely
process is that Petty's clerks—under the strict
supervision of Petty's two most loyal and efficient
lieutenants, his cousin John Pettie and the tireless
assistant Thomas Taylor—were instructed to abstract
and add up the total of Irish family names townland by
townland from the parish poll-tax lists. (32) The
easiest way to calculate the number of English and Scots
was to subtract the Irish totals from the total number
of tax payers enumerated for each townland, parish and
barony. Alternatively, the clerks were instructed to
identify the settlers by their distinctive family names.
The evidence for Co. Fermanagh suggests the latter
strategy since, alone for this county, not only are the
principal Irish names of specific districts named but so
are the principal Scots and English and their
number. As it happens the Armstrongs head the list
with 47 adults, the Johnstons follow with 34, the
Elliots 28, the Grahams 21, the Nixons 14 while the
Catcharts, Belfores, Croziers, Irwins, Montgomerys,
Nobles and Scotts each recorded from five to ten adults.
It is also clear that Co. Down and particularly Co.
Antrim presented special problems to the clerks in
distinguishing between the local Irish, Scots-Gaelic
settlers and other planters with Mac prefixes.

Nevertheless, the picture portrayed in Figure 5 is as
reliable a guide as we are ever likely to get of the
relative distribution of English/Scots vis-à-vis the
Irish for the mid-seventeenth century. Figure 5
summarises at the barony scale the level of immigrant
penetration in Antrim, most of Down, North Armagh, much
of the county of Londonderry, East Donegal and a core
around the lakes of Fermanagh. Key settler names
included Smith, Brown, Murray, Wilson, Clarke, Johnston,
Thompson, Robinson, Reid and Graham. This map
illuminates the cutting edge of a south-westward
frontier as it advanced into the less densely populated
edges of Connaught and the northwest midlands generally.
This advancing front of settler names was marching
against an existing Gaelic world and in this encounter
some of the older populations were deflected further
south into Omeath in the Cooley peninsula to the east
and the Galway-Clare borderlands and islands in the
west. Key settler names Bell and Campbell are included
in the Atlas Abstract (Section VI online).

The second most powerful core of planter surnames
pivoted around the Pale region and Dublin City. Apart
from a strategic northern salient, planter family names
are only weakly represented in the rich hearthlands of
North Leinster. But to the south and west a new wide
band of significant minorities bearing planter names
stretched right across Laois, Offaly and the edges of
North Tipperary to reach the Shannon and Limerick. On
the other flank, these settler names curved southwards
to colonise the West Wicklow-North Wexford borderlands.
Thirdly, there was a southwestern core of planter names
pivoting around Cork City and the Munster plantation
precincts. Beyond these three cores, old Irish family
names predominated.

The 1641 Depositions and particularly the far greater
survival rate of records of the hearth monies for many
of the Ulster counties provide further insights into the
distribution and character of settler names as they were
carried into the northern half of Ireland. Philip
Robinson has made a major contribution here with his
impressive maps of Scottish and English settlement zones
based, amongst other criteria, on surnames analysis.
(33) Bill Macaffee has also done important work here
especially for the Maghera region (34) while Brian
Turner and the late Brendan Adams have furthered our
understanding of what they term the surname
landscapes of Fermanagh and Leitrim. (35) Further
south it has likewise been possible to pinpoint the
spread of English settlers in Tipperary using its hearth
money records. As in Ulster, one notes the key role of
the towns as gathering points and as springboards for
funnelling settlers into the countryside. This surname
analysis allows us to track these families and
individuals as they spread out along the existing roads
into the villages, farms, castles and big houses.

And these detailed seventeenth-century surname
distributions also indicate the fissures along which the
English language spread at the expense of Irish. Along
these linguistic interfaces, compromises, confusions,
ambiguities and pluralities abounded. My own name
Smyth/Smith (it has already splintered!) is the
commonest surname in England and the fifth most common
name in Ireland (see Atlas Abstract of Smith
distribution for both c.1659 and c.1850). As Mac Lysaght
explains some of the Smiths are descendants of
settlers and traders but equally probably at least 80%
of the Smiths of Cavan are of the stock of Mac Gowans
or Gowans who, under pressure of alien legislation
and/or social influence accepted the translated form
and used it ever since. (36) And where I come
from in North Tipperary, the ancestors of the present
day Smiths are remembered in the mid-seventeenth century
hearth money records as the
‘Macingownes’.

Yet a brief survey of the Fiants of the second half of
the sixteenth century shows that both Gaelic Christian
names and surnames were still rendered in their older
forms. The seventeenth century is absolutely decisive
for the transformation and anglicisation of surnames. As
Mac Lysaght notes, this was the period during which
our surnames assumed approximately the forms
ordinarily in use in Ireland today. (37) The
seventeenth century, thus, marks the great divide
between late medieval and modern Ireland and its
surnaming systems. The names of the Elizabethan settlers
and their more numerous successors in the seventeenth
century did not become Gaelicised while the surnames of
the Irish—whether of Gaelic or Anglo-Norman
ancestry—were often transformed beyond
recognition. In a sense, just as the mapping and
renaming of their lands by the imperial power seemed to
both appropriate the landscape and distance them from
it, so the anglicisation of their name forms was another
form of alienation and othering. Clearly the symbolic
universe of the Irish was being both fractured and
reorganised.

In addition, Mac Lysaght has identified at least 255
surnames which are indigenous and common in Britain
which come to be used as the anglicized form of Gaelic
Irish names. These include, for example, Adrian for the
Irish O'Dreane, Badger for Brick, Bird for MacAneany,
Crosbie for MacCrossan, Duck for Lohan, Ingoldsby for
Gallogley, Moleyneux for Mulligan, Rogers for MacRory,
Ryder for Markahan and Woods for MacElhoyle and Kielty.
Likewise, he identifies over 70 Gaelic Irish surnames
which have an English appearance but nevertheless are
rarely if ever derived from Britain. These include
Atkins, Blowick, Cheasty, Durack, Flatly, Kneafsey,
Prunty, Swords and Zorkin. To confuse matters further,
there are about forty Gaelic Irish names such as Brazil,
Hession, Kehoe and Mannix that look like they are of
foreign origin but are rarely if ever found as native to
any country but Ireland. (38) There is also a large
class of Irish surnames, anglicized in a way which makes
them unrecognizable. Such
‘distortions’, as Mac Lysaght notes,
turn Mac Giolla Bride into Mucklebreed and Mac
Oireachtaigh into Gerty. And no one would readily
recognize that (Mac) Lysaght has its origins in Mac
Giolla Iasachta or that Mac Aleese was originally Mac
Giolla losa. It is doubtful if any other West European
country has witnessed such a variety of transformations
in surname forms. (Mis)translations, abbreviations,
elisions, excisions, misunderstandings abound, a process
accelerated further with the exodus to America.

By 1890, the mutation and diversification of these
names over the previous two centuries becomes clearer.
In his survey of that year, Matheson identified close on
8000 surname variations out of a basic stock of over
2000 root names. (39) On average, therefore, the
Registrar General recorded nearly four variations to any
one single family name. At least a quarter of Matheson's
registered surnames showed at least five variations in
form and as many as one out of every six name forms
shows ten or more variations. The name McLaughlin
contains eighteen forms as does Cullen. McGuinness and
Cunningham exhibit over 20 forms as do McDermot and
Bermingham. Connolly, (O)Connor(s) and (O)Byrne reveal
over 25 variations in name form while as we have seen,
MacAneany is rendered in at least 38 different ways. The
shattering of the Irish surname structures says much
about the confusions that prevailed after the military,
political and eventually the linguistic conquest of
English/British forces. The quite extraordinary
proliferation, multiplication and diversification of
single surname forms also points to local and regional
styles of both Irish and Hiberno-English pronunciation
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The geographical story of this anglicisation of Irish
surnames is therefore a story of complex, multiple and
mobile forms which shift and shuffle across a variety of
local and regional terrains. The regaelicisation of many
Irish surname forms since the 1880s has been equally a
complex business. The geographical stories associated
with the ‘O’ and
‘Mac’ forms provides one window on
all these processes.

The ‘1659’ list of principal
Irish family names is of immense value in
reconstructing both the late medieval attrition of the
‘O’ and ‘Mac’ in
family surnames by the mid-seventeenth century as well
as providing an essential benchmark for an analysis of
the later processes of regaelicisation and regional
expressions of such processes as surname renaissance and
symbolic decolonisation. Figure 6 outlines regional
variations in the percentage of the principal Irish
family names which displayed neither an
‘O’ nor a ‘Mac’
form in the mid-seventeenth century. One has to allow
that Irish family names in the 1659 enumeration includes
a number of Old English names that had not been
gaelicised. This therefore affects the distribution
pattern especially in Leinster.

1. Fig. 6: Regional variations of the mid-17th
century of non-O or Mac Irish family
names

Nevertheless, one can clearly identify four cultural
regions. Much of Leinster with a core in the Pale which
expands westwards into the Midlands and southwards down
the Barrow valley to Waterford is seen to be a strongly
anglicised zone. In this region, powerful pressures
linked to the Anglo-Norman colonisation, the deliberate
propagation of the English language as a general policy
dating back to legislation such as that of 1465 which
required every Irishman living within the Pale to take
an English second name (40) all whittled back the
distribution of ‘O’ and
‘Mac’ names. The impact of the early
Laois-Offaly and Wicklow/Wexford plantations is already
evident by the mid-seventeenth century, accelerating
this pattern of name modification and transformation. As
with the Christian names, a sharp linguistic and
cultural frontier is reproduced along the
Leinster/Ulster borderlands.

The second major cultural region expands from this
Northern frontier zone into north-west Leinster and east
Connaught and stretches south through East Clare and
much of Tipperary and Waterford towards an outlet in
South-west Cork. This is the great hybrid cultural
region which emerges on a number of maps of this late
medieval world. Here, powerful cultural influences from
both gaelicising and anglicising forces met, clashed and
fused. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, the
cultural and linguistic balance—as evidenced by the 50
to 70% attrition of ‘O’ and
‘Mac’ name forms—had already swung
in favour of an anglicising model.

Parts of counties Galway and Mayo may have also
belonged to this transitional/hybrid cultural region but
it is more likely that they showed many of the
characteristics of Clare which displays a complicated
mosaic of naming adaptations. And South-west Clare
points the way towards the third major cultural region,
comprising most of South and West Munster. Indeed a
relatively sharp frontier extends from mid Clare into
the hills of Tipperary and extends southwards into the
West Waterford coastlands. South and west of this line a
far greater resistance to the anglicisation of surnames
is revealed for the mid-seventeenth century. A much more
intact Gaelic linguistic and naming structure is
suggested here with significant local core areas of
strength in both the East Cork and the North
Kerry/Limerick hearthlands.

Ulster is again the most outstanding cultural region in
its stubborn retention of its ‘O’ and
‘Mac’ name forms. Over much of this
Northern province—from Lecale in Co. Down to the
peninsulas of Donegal—less than 5% of the principal
Irish names have lost the ‘O’ or
‘Mac’ forms. This region of great
continuity extends over much of Co. Leitrim (and
probably Co. Cavan) as well. And as seen with the
regional variations in Gaelic first name patterns, South
Ulster presents a very sharp frontier to the anglicising
world of North Leinster.

By the mid and late nineteenth century this picture is
very different. Griffith's Valuation for the 1850s (41)
and the Registrar General's survey of 1890 provide us
with magnificently detailed sources as to national,
regional and local patterns of naming. The processes of
surname transformation in the intervening eighteenth
century—the mistranslations, the admixture of forms,
the attritions—needs much further study. For example
Mac Lysaght notes that the great variety of very
specific surnames as revealed in the Elphin diocesan
survey of 1766 has been much reduced by the later
nineteenth century. (42) A summary of the status of
family names as rendered in the English language in the
1766 survey of Cloyne diocese provides other clues to
the deepening of the anglicisation process by the mid
eighteenth century and the forces undermining the
‘Os’ and ‘Macs’.
(43) Only three percent of ‘Irish
Papist’ surnames for this region of North
and East Cork are recorded (or transcribed) as retaining
the ‘O’ and ‘Mac’
forms by 1766. The list of surviving
‘O’ and ‘Mac’
names is as follows: MacAuliffe 63, McCarthy 50, McGrath
48, McNamee 33, McDaniel 27, McDonnell 22, Maguire 8,
O/McBrian 7, O'Callaghan 6, O'Connor 3. Five other
‘O’ or ‘Mac’ names
are each recorded twice and eighteen other surnames
retain the ‘O’ or
‘Mac’ form at least once. And one of
the most telling statistics is that the MacCarthy
surname form is outnumbered by three to one by the
diminished ‘Cartie/Carthy’ form. The
flattening and erosion of the Gaelic name forms appears
to be astonishing.

The cultural distance between the strong Gaelic naming
patterns of North and East Cork as per Petty's 1659 data
and that of 1766 is very sharp indeed. But equally sharp
is the cultural distance experienced by 1890 when
Matheson records that only 14% of the MacCarthy name is
rendered in the abbreviated and impoverished
‘Carthy/Cartie’ forms. Even allowing
for underenumeration by English speaking pastors of the
MacCarthy forms in 1766 in what was still often an
Irish-speaking area, it is clear that by the 1890s the
regaelicisation of surname forms had ushered in a new
era for both Cork and Ireland.

Much research needs to be carried out on the specific
timing of, and regional variations in, this
regaelicisation drive as represented by the resumption
of the ‘O’ and
‘Mac’ forms. What is clear is that
its roots lie back in the mid nineteenth century,
perhaps earlier. This generalisation is confirmed by a
brief analysis of a small sample of three surnames that
of the O'Neill/Neill, O'Connor/Conners and
O'Regan/Regan—over the period between 1850 and
1890. An analysis of the O'Neill/Neill distributions
c.1850 shows that islandwide 47% of these families
rendered their name with the ‘O’
form. By 1890 this proportion had risen to 62.5%. The
O'Connor percentage doubled from the 11% recorded in
1850 to 20.4% in 1890. The O'Regan name form had also
doubled its ‘O’ component but from a
very low base of 3.3% in 1850 to 6.5% in 1890.

But this small sample also clearly reveals profound
differences in the fortunes of different Irish family
names over recent centuries. The O'Neill/Neill dialectic
belongs to a small minority of five Irish surnames which
in Matheson's 1890 survey have a greater than 50%
retention of the ‘O’ form. Of the 312
O'Donnell/Donnell name forms, 94.2% retain the
‘O’ form—the most resilient
therefore of the big aristocratic names. O'Hara/Hara
(111 examples) likewise reveals either a striking
stability or renaissance with 95.5% exhibiting this
‘O’ form. These are followed by O'Dea
(77.7%) and O'Brien (67.1%). Of Matheson's total sample
of Irish names, based on all births registered in 1890,
four other family names score over 40% in their use of
the ‘O’ form; the O'Gradys, the
O'Keeffes, the O'Loughlins and the O'Shaughnessys. At
the other end of the spectrum of families which retain
the ‘O’ form—O'Boyle (6.8%),
O'Byrne (1.08%), O'Doherty (1.9%), O'Donovan (5.0%),
O'Driscoll (9.7%), O'Farrell (5.1%), O'Flynn (1.0%),
O'Mahony (8.3%), O'Regan (6.8%), O'Reilly (9.6%) and
O'Riordan (6.5%)—all fall below 10%.

But the centuries old attrition was much greater and
deeper than this. Only 10.8% of the family names
identified by Matheson as originally characterised by an
‘O’ form actually retained this form
by 1890. More dramatically, only c.3% of the potential
family names as identified by Woulfe as beginning with
‘ó’ had survived into the late
nineteenth century retaining their
‘O’ form. Mysteries abound. Why, for
example, did ‘strong’ families like
the (O) Kennedys of Thomond not display even one
‘O’ form in 1890? In some instances,
there may be a Gaelic syntactic explanation. Clearly,
this whole area requires much further research.

Matheson's report also allows for broad regional
generalisations to be made in relation to the retention
or loss of ‘O’ and
‘Mac’ forms. Munster is the great
stronghold of the ‘O’ forms (50%)
with Ulster (20%) and Leinster (18.5%) very similar
while Connaught retains only 11.2% of the total for
Ireland as a whole. A percentage analysis of the ratio
of ‘O’ forms to the total population
born in each province in 1891 provides a somewhat more
precise picture. Munster emerges as the most resilient
and retentive of the ‘O’ form,
followed by Leinster and Connaught in that order with
Ulster somewhat weaker. However, if one were to analyse
the name formations using religious affiliation as a
control, Ulster's position in the league table would
likely be enhanced.

In this context perhaps the most dramatic reversal in
the status of the provinces emerges when the
retention/resilience of ‘Mac’ forms
is scrutinised. Ulster is emphatically the core world of
‘Mac’ formations with 63% of the
total surviving Mac forms in 1890 concentrated in the
Northern province—a pattern which is even more
emphatic in Gaelic Scotland. Munster and Connaught have
very similar proportions with 13.3% and 13.7%
respectively while Leinster is the weakest with 9.8%.
And of the leading names with over 200 occurrences in
1890, only four are from the ‘O’
family—O'Connor, O'Donnell, O'Gara, O'Neill—while
seven are ‘Mac’ names: MacCarthy,
MacLaughlin, MacCormack, MacGrath, MacDonnell, MacMahon
and MacKenna.

These patterns are fascinating and may suggest the
originating regions for the ‘O’ and
‘Mac’ forms. Did the
‘O’ form of family names originate in
the south/southwest of Ireland? And is the
‘Mac’ form originally much more
rooted in the northern half of the island? The strength
of the Mac form in Ulster also strongly relates to the
immigration of many Scots settlers into Ulster retaining
the ‘Mac’ form. Examples include
McBurney, McClelland, McKinney and McKinstry. Likewise,
given that the ‘Mac’ form had higher
status in these settler regions there may not have been
the same psychological pressure on the old Irish to drop
or mask the ‘Mac’ form in such
territories.

There also remains the mystery of why certain
‘Mac’ names have a high retention
rate while others display high levels of erosion. Taking
a sample of the A to C ‘Mac’ names,
MacAlister, McArdle, MacCawley/MacAuliffe, MacBride,
MacCabe, MacCann, MacCartan and MacClean and McCloskey
show no loss in the ‘Mac’ forms. In
contrast the Bradys, Breens, Brennans, Cashins, Clancys
and Coughlans had totally lost the
‘Mac’ form by 1890 and names such as
MacCafferty and McCormack each show a 36% loss. Phonetic
factors clearly enter the equation here but are
insufficient explanations of heavy gains and losses
amongst the ‘Os’ and
‘Macs’.

One can attempt to summarise these local and regional
variations in surname patterns by analysing barony by
barony the dialectic between ‘O’ and
‘non-O’ forms in names such as
(O)Neill, (O)Connor and (O)Regan from Griffith's
Valuation. Figure 7 shows the ratio of
‘O'Neill’ surname forms in 1850
vis-à-vis the ‘Neill’ forms. The
pattern in both may be reminiscent of the overall
islandwide pattern of anglicisation and resistance to
anglicisation as evidenced in the 1659 map (Figure 6)
while also showing surprising new regional dimensions.
The settled Pale region of early English speech and the
early loss of the ‘O’ form is
revealed once again with an enlarged anglicised core
spreading westwards from North Co. Dublin across the
southern halves of Meath and Westmeath to cross the
Shannon into South-East Galway. This core zone of
anglicisation then extends southwards into East
Tipperary and South Kilkenny and bends north along the
western edge of Carlow and into Co. Wicklow. The second
zone with high levels of anglicisation and the loss of
the ‘O’ form includes practically all
of the rest of Leinster and also includes much of North
Tipperary, North-East Clare and East Galway. However,
the most surprising addition to the zone of high
‘O’ losses in the O'Neill name are
the old Gaelic strongholds of South-West Munster
comprising West Limerick, Kerry and West Cork. Was the
Munster plantation and the consequent early spread of
English speech significant in this zone? Or does the
‘Neill’ form have deeper roots in
this specific region? Already in 1660, the
‘Neill’ form is well entrenched from
South Co. Dublin on to its core area of expression in
mid-Carlow/Kilkenny and South Tipperary with outliers
around Cork city and Islands barony in Co. Clare.

2. Fig. 7: Ratio of O'Neill versus
Neill surname forms in 1850

In contrast, the great strongholds of
‘O'Neill’ surname
renderings—where the ‘O’Neill'
forms outnumbers the ‘Neill’ form by
more than ten to one—are to the north and west,
stretching from the Mourne-Dundalk and Glenarm/Antrim
regions in the east on into the West Londonderry, Tyrone
and East Donegal territories to the West. In addition,
peak areas of O'Neill resilience emerges in the
Carbury/Leyny section of Co. Sligo and the South
Leitrim/North Longford zone to the south. Finally,
another ‘O'Neill’ stronghold
stretches from Ibrickan in the west to Bunratty in the
centre of Clare.

All these cores act as anchors to wider regions of
continuity and resurgence over much of Ulster (apart
from Cavan), along the northern and western edges of
Leinster as well as comprising much of Connaught. Most
of Thomond Clare falls into the pattern as does a
strikingly wide belt of territory stretching from East
Limerick through south and South-West Tipperary on into
coastal Waterford. This latter Munster region appears to
be a zone where the battle for supremacy between the
Irish and English languages and cultures was prolonged.
It may be no coincidence that this mid-Munster belt is
also one of the great fulcrums of a series of agrarian,
nationalist and Catholic movements from the
mid-eighteenth century onwards and which in the
twentieth century produced the Cooperative and Muintir
na Tíre organisations.

As we have seen the O'Connor name form lost out most
emphatically to the Connor(s) form between the
seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. By 1850 only a
few strongholds retaining the ‘O’
form persisted—one is the rather isolated region of
the Déise of Waterford; a coastal zone from the Ibrickan
to Corcomroe stands out in Clare while Kilconnell is in
a striking outlier of O'Connors in Galway. Sligo's
baronies of Leyny and Corran act as the pivot of a
strong zone of survival of the ‘O’
form in the North-West with local cores in Tullyhaw in
Cavan and Tirhugh in South Donegal. Weaker resilient
regions exist from Dunluce Lower in Antrim and
Morgallion in Co. Meath. Otherwise, the Connor(s) forms
reign supreme and most emphatically over most of Ulster
and much of Leinster apart from a cluster of baronies in
Meath and Dublin. Excluding Gaelic Clare and Waterford,
the O'Connor form is very weak over the rest of Munster
although, once again, the band of country between
Limerick city south to Cork city shows a stronger
inclination in the use of the ‘O’
form. Cork and Limerick counties are also the only
regions where the ‘O'Regan’ name form
is represented in 1850; elsewhere the
‘Regan’ form is absolutely
dominant.

Most interesting, the strongest cores in 1850 for the
O'Regan name form are in the cities of Limerick and Cork
where the ratios are well above their county levels.
Likewise the cities of Cork and Limerick show greater
retention of, or more likely, resumption of the O'Neill
form. This pattern is also replicated for the O'Connor
formation and Dublin city also shows a far higher ratio
of the O'Connor versus Connor(s) form than does the
surrounding counties. These urban statistics for the
mid-nineteenth century all clearly point to, amongst
other things, the early regaelicisation process which
under the Gaelic League and other cultural forces
gathers a powerful momentum by the last decades of the
nineteenth century. By this time, the majority of the
Irish population had come to consider Ireland as a
separate and autonomous nation and felt its surnames
should both reflect and demarcate that heritage. It is,
therefore, not surprising that the critical decades for
key publications on Irish surnames and placenames was at
the latter end of the nineteenth century and the
beginning of the twentieth century. (44) Narrative power
had shifted again. And the struggle for geographical
space was not only expressed in changing street names
but also in the transformation and gaelicisation of
first and second names. (45)

Matheson does not allow for a city/county analysis of
this shift but the late twentieth century telephone
directories do. (46) By 1990—a century after
Matheson's report—the resumption of the
‘O’ and ‘Mac’
forms is both dramatic and still geographically
instructive. In Cork City in 1990 only 0.8% of the
O'Connor families still used the Connor(s) form. The
equivalent figure for Dublin City is 6.7% while the
Connor(s) form is stronger in Waterford City with 16.1%.
Limerick City is emphatic in its assumption of the
‘O’ for with only 0.6% (or one
household) retaining the Connor(s) form. The equivalent
figure for Galway City is 3.7% while Sligo, an old
O'Connor stronghold, reveals a 100% use of the
‘O’ form. As we move into the
Ulster/Leinster borderlands Dundalk shows a 16.6% use of
the Connors form. Derry City shows a stronger shift
towards this form with 34.1% while in the Belfast City
region nearly one-half (45.0%) still retain the Connors
form. The O'Regan/Regan dialectic reveals similar
patterns with striking regional variations from its Cork
core where 89% are rendered as O'Regan by the year 2000
while in the northern half of the island less than 20%
have yet assumed the ‘O’ form.

Thus, in contrast to the attrition of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, the
‘regaelicisation’ of Irish surnames
has been a feature of Irish life since at least the
1850s. More and more families asserted their familial
and national identity by resuming the use of
‘O’ and ‘Mac’. For
example, in Griffith's Valuation less than 2% of the
O'Sullivans rendered their name with an
‘O’. By Matheson's survey in 1890 14%
of the O'Sullivans used the O' form. By 1914 only 21% of
the O'Sullivans had assumed the ‘O’
form. This figure had trebled to 60% by 1944 (47) and
at the beginning of the twenty-first century over 80% of
the O'Sullivans render their name in this way. Similar
trends are revealed by the O'Regan surname which has
increased from 6.9% in 1890 to 60% today.

The widely dispersed name of O'Connor(s) is most
geographically illuminating in this context. It is clear
that the highest number of early adopters of the
‘O’ form amongst the O'Connors
resided in the port cities of the South, and their
adjacent hinterlands. Limerick, Cork and Dublin
citizens—in that order—led in this renaming
process. Rural areas generally were slower in adopting
these changes, with the north-western counties showing
lower patterns in the use of the O'Connor form. And by
far the slowest rate of this form of regaelicisation in
the island has been experienced in Northern Ireland
where a majority still use the Connor(s) form.

One of the great but not unexpected ironies, therefore,
in the regaelicisation process has been that the core
regions of anglicisation and the declassing of Gaelic
forms of dress and address (including first and second
names) have been the focal points of the modern Gaelic
revival. (48) The southern cities and their hinterlands
have led the change, especially those of Limerick and
Cork in Munster followed by Dublin in Leinster. Equally
ironic is the fact that the north-western counties—so
stubborn and so retentive of older forms up until the
nineteenth century—have been slower to adapt the
‘O’ form. And the final irony is that
Ulster and more particularly the counties within
Northern Ireland—the region of greatest continuity and
resilience in the seventeenth century—has the lowest
rate of regaelicisation of surnames in the whole island.
In many respects one could argue that the acceleration
of the regaelicisation process—which was initiated by
the nationalising middle classes of Cork, Limerick and
Dublin and adjacent counties and towns from the 1850s
and especially from the 1880s onwards—has only taken
off in the North of Ireland since ‘the
troubles’ of the late 1960s. Clearly the
fostering of the Irish language by the southern state
and its neglect in the northern state played a critical
role here. Whatever the period involved, the extent to
which ruling elites and their associated political and
social formations foster or do not foster a particular
language has a profound effect on many aspects of a
culture, not least both on the name forms themselves and
the terrains of discourse about names, places and
identities.

The geographical study of Irish first names and second
names is still at an early stage. This section only
touches the surface of some of the major contours that
describe and encompass this vast territory. It is true
that we have explored and mapped some essential elements
in the mosaic. But it is also clear that many stories
about changing ideologies, linguistic encounters and
competing terrains of discourse have still to be
elucidated and written to better understand the major
cultural forces shaping these shifting worlds of naming
and names and associated identity constructions.

Nevertheless an initial mining of the relevant sources
is useful for both dismantling some inherited myths and
for raising a series of questions. Greater precision
about the beginning dates for a range of Christian names
and surnames is very helpful for both dating and mapping
a range of placenames containing these elements. An
analysis of the hegemonic battles between the
Celtic/Irish/Gaelic and the Germanic/English/British
traditions may also both amplify and obscure other
minority voices that echo ever so faintly down the
centuries. It is possible, for example, that one of the
first great phases of (re)gaelicisation post-dates the
Scandinavian-Irish encounter? Likewise, the geographical
expansion of medieval Norman-English naming systems is
impressive in scope. However, we are still unclear about
the regional extent and naming impact of the so-called
Gaelic resurgence of the later Middle Ages. Even more
striking and requiring much more research is the full
story of the geography of the most recent
regaelicisation phase from c.1850 and especially from
the 1880s. (47) There have therefore, been a series of
powerful ebbs and flows between gaelicising and
anglicising forces and in all these phases Ireland
emerges as complex, plural, fragmented and regionally
diverse.

There remains a whole series of mysteries relating to
the survival or non-survival of particular name forms.
Why, for example, did ‘O’ and
‘Mac’ remain so strong in certain
family surnames and totally disappear in others. And in
the most recent regaelicisation phase, why is it that
there is a host of Irish names such as Boland, Brophy,
Connolly, Garvey, Hennessy, Larkin and Murphy where the
prefix is rarely if ever resumed? Likewise much work
needs to be done on the shuffling and interaction of
name forms as between immigrant and local families in
the early modern era. The data-sources for the
seventeenth as well as the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries are relatively good—but the crucial naming
worlds of the eighteenth century, often bilingual and
bicultural—still require much attention. So do the
complex stories and issues pivoting around names and
identities.

And finally, right across Europe for many centuries
names placed the individual in his or her family,
community, gender and class. (48) However in
recent decades the choice of first names has at least
been partially liberated from the constraints of family
and religion as fashionable new names come and go. In
contrast traditional naming systems connected the
individual or family to social structures and cultural
formations that were more permanent and slower to
change. It is these powerful continuities and their
transformations that have been at the heart of this
geographical analysis. (49) It is to be hoped that the
completion of the Atlas project in the near future will
provide further understanding of the complex processes
which, varying over time and space, shaped the highly
diverse and plural heritage of Irish family names.

Séamus Pender (ed.), A Census of
Ireland circa 1659 with essential materials from the
poll money ordinances 1660-1661 (Dublin,
2002) with a new introduction by William J. Smyth,
v-lxii.

William J. Smyth, Society and
settlement in seventeenth century Ireland: the
evidence of the ‘1659
Census’ in William J. Smyth and
Kevin Whelan (eds) Common ground: essays on the
historical geography of Ireland (Cork,
1988), pp.55-83.

William J. Smyth, Property, patronage
and population: reconstructing the human geography
of mid-seventeenth century County Tipperary
in William Nolan (ed.), Tipperary: history and
society (Dublin, 1985), pp.104-38.

Brian ó Cuív, Aspects of Irish
personal names (Dublin: Institute for
Advanced Studies, 1986), pp.3-36. As ó Cuív
emphasises, the genealogies as well as the Annals are
the primary sources for the study of early Irish
names. The key text here is M.A. O'Brien's
Corpus genealogiarum Hiberniae (Dublin,
1976).

MacLysaght, Irish families,
op. cit., p.34.

This analysis is based mainly on the
typescript summaries of Trinity College Dublin
MSS812-39, involving depositions concerning the Irish
insurrection of 1641 with additional materials from
the original manuscripts. My thanks to research
assistant Ms. Millie Glennon for assistance in this
area. For a detailed analysis of this source, see
Nicholas Canny, The 1641 depositions as a
source for the writing of social history: County
Cork as a case study in Patrick O'Flanagan
and Cornelius G. Buttimer (eds.), Cork: history
and society (Dublin, 1993), pp.249-308.

Richard M. Flatman (ed.), Some
inhabitants of the baronies of Newcastle and
Uppercross, Co. Dublin, c.1650 in The
Irish Genealogist, vii (1989), pp.496-503
and pp.3-14.

Mac Lysaght, Irish families,
op. cit., p.35.

Stephen Wilson, The meaning of
naming: a social and cultural history of personal
naming in Western Europe (London, 1998),
pp.86-114.

The Irish fiants of the Tudor
sovereigns—during the reigns of Henry VIII,
Edward VI, Philip and Mary, and Elizabeth I
(Dublin, 1994), vols I and II.

Edward Mac Lysaght, Irish
families, op. cit., pp.
199-210. For his discussion of the names King, Martin
and White see his The Surnames of
Ireland (Dublin, 1980), pp.183, 209 and 229.

William J. Smyth, Wrestling with
Pettys ghost—the origins, nature and
relevance of the so-called 1659 Census,
new introduction to Pender's A Census of
Ireland circa 1659, op. cit., v-lxii.

Philip S. Robinson, The Plantation
of Ulster: a British settlement in an Irish
landscape 1600-1670 (Dublin, 1984).

William Macaffee, The colonisation
of the Maghera region of South Derry during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in
Ulster folklife, 23 (1977), pp.70-91.
See also William Macaffee and Valerie Morgan,
Population in Ulster 1600-1700 in Peter
Roebuck (ed.), Plantation to partition
(Belfast, 1981).

Robert E. Matheson, Special Report
on Surnames in Ireland (Dublin, 1909)
[together with] Varieties and Synonymes of
Surnames and Christian names in Ireland
originally published in Dublin (1901) reissued as two
volumes in one by Genealogical Publishing Co. Inc.,
Baltimore, 1982.

Mac Lysaght, Irish families,
op. cit., p.31.

This section is based on an analysis of the
barony by barony lists of surnames from Griffith's
Valuation as indexed county by county in National
Library of Ireland, Dublin. My thanks to Mr. Gerry
Lyne (NLI) for his assistance in this area and to
research assistant Ms. Millie Glennon for her detailed
work on this source. In addition, Mr. David Joyce, Ms.
Joanne McCarthy and Ms. Elaine Cullinane have done
great work on the computer mapping of both the
Valuation and the ‘1659’ Census.

The following analysis is based on a study
of surname listings in the telephone directories for
all of the Republic and Northern Ireland 1990-2001.

Mac Lysaght, Irish families,
op. cit.

On a broader cultural front, see Jeanne
Sheehy, The rediscovery of Ireland's past: the
Celtic revival 1830-1930 (London, 1980). See
also Jim MacLaughlin, Reimagining the
nation-state: the contested terrains of
nation-building (London, 2001), especially
pp.165-209.

Wilson, The means of naming,
op.cit., p.337. 50.

My final thanks go to Orla O'Sullivan and Suzanne
O'Sullivan who magically deciphered the succession of
manuscripts and to Neil Buttimer, Jim MacLaughlin,
Máirín Ní Dhonnchada and Vera Ryan for their helpful
comments on the text itself.

In order to create the surname maps for this project, two
different sources of data were used. These two sources,
namely Griffith's Valuation of 1850/51 and Petty's
so-called ‘1659 Census’ of Ireland,
have provided data on surnames which was then mapped using
a specific GIS programme called ArcView (see section IV).
The two data sources used provide quite different types
and distributions of data. Griffith's Valuation provides
numerical data, on a parish level, of the number of
households bearing a particular surname. This ensures that
the data could then be mapped on a parish, barony and
county level if so required. Petty's ‘1659
Census’ provides numerical data, on a barony
(or sometimes county) level, of the number of adults
bearing a specific principal family name. As explained in
the introduction and using Edward Maclysaght's seminal
work on the forms of The Surnames of
Ireland (1985), a selection of names were mapped
using the Griffith's Valuation data. All of
the principal names from the 1659 Census were mapped.

The so-called ‘1659 Census’ was
compiled by Sir William Petty by abstracting the numbers
for and names of the adults returned as paying a poll
tax. The poll tax was carried out, for the most part, in
the year 1660. The so-called ‘Census’
is arranged by divisions of counties, baronies, parishes
and townlands, and where applicable, by cities, parishes
and streets. The most influential people in society were
identified as Tituladoes, a term coined
by Petty himself to describe those individuals who are
returned as paying the highest taxes. It is thought that
Petty wanted, in particular, to ascertain the ethnic
divisions and proportions within Ireland at the time.
Therefore a section at the end of each barony analysis
was devoted to enumerating the numbers of Irish
vis-à-vis Scots and English living within each barony.
In particular, a numerical list was made of the
‘Principal Irish Names’ for each
barony.

There are, however, a few difficulties with using the
1659 Census as a source of data. Because this document
is, in fact, based on a poll tax, it is not a full
‘census’ of the population at the
time but rather of numbers of adults paying tax. It is
probable that most single adult males and females who
were not servants or employed were excluded from the
taxation and, therefore, the record. As another example,
holders of ecclesiastical positions are not included in
the returns as they were exempt from payment of the poll
tax. The greatest difficulty with the Census however, is
the fact that some data is missing. There is no data for
five counties in Ireland, these being Cavan, Galway,
Mayo, Tyrone and Wicklow. Data is missing for four
baronies in Cork and nine baronies in Meath. The data
for Co Fermanagh and Co Monaghan is available only on a
county level. Therefore special provision had to be made
for these situations when creating the surname maps.
Another difficulty involved in the use of Petty's Census
is the changing of the barony boundaries themselves.
Since the seventeenth century, many baronies have either
been enlarged or reduced, yet the baseline digitised map
we have been using is based on the barony boundaries of
the nineteenth century. Much time was expended in
ascertaining where the old barony boundaries begin and
end, and changing the digital map layout to accurately
portray the seventeenth century data.

The aim of this part of the project was to map all of
the principal names that occurred in Ireland in the
mid-seventeenth century. For this purpose, all the
principal names contained in the index of the 1659
Census were noted. There were, in total, 2365
‘principal family names’. A sizeable
part of the project was to then to investigate how this
range of surnames would be mapped. This meant including
all the possible variations of a particular surname into
a single category. For example, there were sixteen
variations on the name Brien, all of which had to be
gathered together. Eventually the number of surnames
arrived at to be mapped was close on 700. This was, at
times, a very difficult process. Names that may appear
to be quite similar may not, in fact, have any relation
to one another. Though we followed MacLysaght as closely
as possible, sometimes other considerations also
affected the decision whether to assimilate or
distinguish certain surnames. The anglicisation of Irish
surnames had already strongly developed by the
mid-seventeenth century and in a number of cases as, for
example, with forms such as Morrow, O Morroe, McMorey
and MacMorrough, it is almost impossible to determine
the original Irish names. However, attention to the
baronial locations of particular names is helpful in
this context.

A database was created in Access to facilitate the
input of data on a barony level. As a surname was found
in a particular barony in the 1659 Census, the number of
occurrences of that name was inputted in the Access
database. This was a painstaking process, as there were,
in effect, over 2000 names to process. Once this data
capture process was completed, however, the data itself
was converted into ArcInfo through a process known as
spatial data-integration. ArcView was then used for the
analysis of the data and for the production of the maps
of the surnames in the 1659 Census. It is notable that
in the index to the surnames mapped in the 1659 Census,
many more ‘usual’ surnames do not
appear in their familiar form, if they appear at all.
For example Buckley, whilst a numerous name in Ireland
today, does not appear even once in the 1659 Census. In
a similar fashion, O Sullivan, very numerous today in
the Cork and Kerry region, does not appear in its more
usual form in 1659—all the ‘(O)
Sullivans’ are returned as
‘Sullivane’ in 1659. However, other
O'Sullivans, MacCarthys, Fitzgeralds and probably Burkes
and Ryans are obscured by the continued use of a range
of patronymics such as MacTeige, MacDonagh, MacDaniell,
MacShane, MacJames, MacThomas, Fitzmaurice and
Fitzwilliam in 1659.

Griffith's Valuation provides details of households at
the much more detailed parish scale. There are
approximately three thousand three hundred civil
parishes in Ireland, as opposed to just over three
hundred baronies used in Petty's Census. The
‘Index of Surnames’ abstracted from
Griffith's Valuation was the source of our mapping data.
This index gives alphabetical listings of all of the
surnames located in each civil parish in Ireland.
Therefore it is possible to document and map the number
of times each surname appears in each parish. A database
was created in Access containing the number of times
each surname occurred on a parish, barony and county
level. As a surname was found in a parish in Griffith's
Valuation, it was documented in Access. In Access, each
parish had its own identifier. In a similar manner to
the methods used for the 1659 Census, once this data
capture phase was completed, the data was inputted into
ArcInfo through a process known as spatial
data-integration. Essentially, each parish with its
unique identifier in Access was matched up with a
polygon that represented the corresponding parish in
ArcInfo. This enables the distribution of each of the
family names to be mapped not only at the parish level,
but also, if necessary, at barony and county levels.

The anglicisation of Irish surnames to English forms
had accelerated rapidly by the mid-nineteenth century.
This is clearly illustrated by the names King, Martin
and White. King is usually an English-derived name in
Ireland. But since the seventeenth century it has also
been widely used as an anglicised form of several names
assumed to be connected with the term
‘Rí—King’. For example the
names Conry, Conroy, Cunree, MacAree and MacKeary have
all been anglicised as King. However, in the 1659
mapping, King is uniquely associated with Co.
Westmeath—and this is likely to represent the rare
name ó Cionga which belongs to the shores of Lough Ree.
By the time of Griffith's Valuation, the surname King
has assimilated a number of such distinct Irish names.
Likewise, the surname Martin—which is widespread
in Ireland as well as in England and Scotland—is
in Ireland linked with this Galway Anglo-Norman family ,
the old Gaelic family name Gilmartin, as well as the
MacMartins in Tyrone and the ó Martins of Westmeath.
(See Atlas Abstract part VI). And finally, the English
name White is often in Ireland of Old English origin,
for which de Faoite is the Irish form. But by
translating names linked with such words as bán and
geal, White often replaces Irish surnames such as Bane,
Bawn, Galligan, and Kilbane. (See Atlas Abstract part
VI). Thus, when mapping surnames from Griffith's
Valuation, the researcher can only map the
‘composite’ anglicised
name—such as King or Martin or White. By the 1850s
it is not possible to identify the other underlying
Irish surnames absorbed by a more inclusive, powerful
name such as White.

In looking at the origins of family names (and
necessarily including forenames) we have documented in
detail, firstly, from the Annals of
Ulster, all the occurrences of such names,
beginning with forenames, from c.770–c.1120.
Similarly, and from the same source we have analysed the
distribution of documented occupations between
c.770–c.1120. This time framework has been divided
into eight different time intervals. Each forename and
surname is listed according to the particular time
interval in which it first emerges. This data has been
inputted into Microsoft Excel. With suitable editing and
cross-referencing, these spreadsheets highlighted the
distribution of forename and surname occurrences over
time, while it also highlighted the evolution of
occupations over time (See summaries in appendices).

The Atlas of Family Names in Ireland
project involves the creation of a substantial GIS
digital map, a database archival system and a digital
research tool. The following section describes in detail
the process undertaken in order to create this GIS map
and the name database. The data capture phase, of both
map and attribute data formats, was a long and tedious
one. The result was the creation of a valuable digital
mapping resource with wide application within historical
geographic research. The process began with the
digitising of the 1841 civil parish boundaries. This was
undertaken as part of the ‘Irish Famine Maps
Project’ by the Department of Geography at
UCC. The digital maps thus created for the Famine Maps
Project are now used as the base maps from which the
Atlas of Family Names in Ireland digital
maps are produced.

The 1841Census of Ireland was the first detailed census
‘survey’ to be taken based on the
almost completed original six inch to one-mile OS map
survey of Ireland. It was therefore the obvious choice
as the source material for the capture of civil parish
boundaries.

By the early 1990s Geographical Information Systems
(GIS) had emerged as an ideal tool to help geographers
uncover information from diverse sources of physical and
human geographic data. A computer-based GIS could be
used to capture, organise and analyse the mass of data
contained in the ‘1659 Census’ and in
Griffith's Valuation of the 1850s. The GIS enabled a
structured approach for analysis and graphic
visualisation that could lead to new insights into the
trends and distributions in the name database.

The Irish Famine Maps and Irish Family Names Atlas
projects presented a classical GIS problem. All of the
original source documents (containing both the map and
attribute data) were paper-based. The aim was to create
a digital map framework representing the parishes and
towns to which the name data could be linked. This would
facilitate the input of queries to create different
views of the data, isolating or combining certain items
in the database, the results being presented in
choropleth maps. No digital copies of the six-inch map
series reflecting the 1841 Civil Parishes were
available. In order to create the framework map it was
necessary to find a suitable paper map to digitise. It
would not be feasible to digitise the individual
six-inch maps; it took thousands of maps at this scale
to cover the entire island. A survey accurate map was
not necessary; what was needed was a map graphic at a
resolution sufficient to accurately reflect the data on
a computer display or in an A4 or folio sized
publication. Equally important was a source map that
could be digitised within a reasonable time frame.

The index sheets to the six-inch map series were chosen
as the source maps. Each county had its own index sheet.
The map outlined the numbered six-inch sheets that
covered that county. It shows the barony and parish
boundaries and the location of the towns and villages.
It also showed the junctions with adjoining counties.
This was very important for the later joining of the
individual digitised counties. The index maps were on
standard sized sheets so many of the counties were
mapped at different scales. This meant that joining the
maps was one of many non-trivial issues to be
resolved.

In order to digitise a paper map it must first be
registered on the digitising table. For this a series of
geographic control points or Tics must be created, a
half dozen or more control points that would contain and
span the county to be digitised. Ultimately thirty-two
maps would be digitised separately and joined to form
the national map. To facilitate this joining a national
series of Tics had to be created; each accurately
positioned at the county junctions and uniquely
identified by a number—the TicID. Almost all of the
Tics would be common to more that one county map. The
Index map shows the county junctions but there is no
grid reference system on these maps. Each junction had
to be identified on the modern half-inch map series and
an accurate grid reference generated. This led to a
series of Tics covering the entire island each with a
unique TicID and an accurate Grid Reference.

The manuscript map is first captured in digitiser
coordinates, in this case digitiser inches. It then has
to be transformed into real world coordinates, into
Irish National Grid coordinates, using GIS functions.
The national series of Tics file with their associated
Grid References was also used to enable this
transformation.

GIS projects like this requires a seamless integration
between the various elements of the hardware and
software systems. PCArcInfo was chosen as the initial
GIS package for map data capture because of its
extensive digitising and editing facilities. Digitising
could not begin until PCArcInfo was successfully
installed and interfaced with the digitising table. The
PC had to have sufficient memory and resources to do the
work and to facilitate the crucial regular back-up of
data. This assembly and integration of systems was
another non-trivial issued to be resolved.

PCArcInfo, though ideal for digitising, does not have a
user-friendly interface for data entry, analysis or map
creation. This was part of the reason for using a
‘flat file’ structure rather than a
relational database structure. Though less efficient
because of the duplication of some records, barony and
county names for example, this ‘flat
file’ simplified exporting the database to
other software packages for easier data entry and
editing. Because of the historical nature of the
material there would not be any updates to the map
database. Modern PC systems can easily handle the fixed
size of the map database with considerable amounts of
attached data.

ArcView has extensive data browsing, analysis and map
creation facilities. This was chosen as the GIS package
used to integrate the digitised maps and the family name
database, to analyse and view the data and to create
numerous choropleth maps.

County Cork was chosen for the digitising trial. Many
more non-trivial issues now presented themselves. The
census data for each county is organised by barony,
listing the parishes alphabetically and including in
each parish any existing towns. The digital equivalent
of a paper map sheet is called a coverage. The parish is
an areal object represented in the GIS coverage as a
polygon. The town is a point object, represented in the
GIS coverage as a point. PCArcInfo, like most GIS
packages at the time, did not allow points and polygons
to be stored on the same coverage.

Each object within a coverage has to have a unique
identifier so that the GIS can keep track of the object
and its attached data. The parish/polygons and the
town/points had to be stored in separate coverages and
each had to have its own unique series of numbered
identifiers. Each county would therefore have two
coverages, a polygon coverage representing the parishes
and a point coverage representing the towns. The
parish/polygon coverage is the more complex and formed
the base map used to generate the barony map for the
Family Names Database.

The parish polygon is a series of arcs representing the
borders of the parish joined at nodes to form an
enclosed area. Adjoining parishes can share arcs and
nodes to form their representative polygons. Each
polygon must contain a label with an associated unique
identifier—the UserID. The name of the parish, its
area, its barony and county and all associated data is
linked to that parish through this unique UserID.

The trial digitising of County Cork was done relatively
quickly and the polygon labels with associated UserIDs
were created automatically using a PCArcInfo option. A
number of important issues became apparent at this
stage.

Spurious arcs and polygons were created if the
digitising was not done carefully. During the automatic
creation of labels these spurious polygons were also
allocated labels and UserIDs. The time needed to find
these spurious arcs and polygons and correct them was
significantly longer that the time needed for an
original careful digitising. There was also the issue of
empty spaces within the county map. This came about
because a significant number of parishes had detached
portions. As the parishes were being digitised any
detached portions had to be found, digitised and
allocated the same UserID. Otherwise there would be
errors in the map database and
‘holes’ in the choropleth maps.

The County Cork trial made it very clear that only a
meticulous and painstaking approach to the digitising
would ensure that the resulting map and attached
database would be accurate without having to undertake
significant post digitising editing.

Each parish was given by hand a unique UserID from 1 to
circa 3,300. A similar but separate UserID scheme was
used to identify the towns.

Digitising proceeded as follows: The appropriate index
map sheet was registered on the digitising table. The
census was referenced for the next parish to be
digitised and its name, UserID and area in acres noted.
The Index to the Townlands and Towns, Parishes
and Baronies of Ireland was referenced to
check for any detached portions and for the numbers of
the six-inch sheets that contained the parish. This
helped to locate the parish on the index map sheet. The
boundaries of the parish and any detached portions were
noted on the index map sheet. The paper source was
prepared by highlighting where needed the outline of the
parish and noting and highlighting the location of nodes
that would be shared with adjoining parishes. The parish
outline was then digitised and the label added and
allocated the noted UserID. After each barony was
finished, the coverage was checked for errors using
PCArcInfo's editing functions. This identified any
unclosed polygons or polygons without labels. After
errors were corrected the next barony was digitised
until the county was completed. Completed counties were
transformed from digitiser inches to national grid
coordinates. They were then joined to form provinces and
provinces joined to form the national map. Some careful
editing was also needed after each join operation to
eliminate errors along the junction of joined counties
or provinces.

This approach resulted in an average digitising rate of
10 polygons an hour. This is also the average rate
suggested in most GIS references books. In many cases
the original six-inch map series held in the Boole
Library had to be consulted in order reconcile conflicts
between the census data, the index to the six-inch maps
and the Index to Townlands, all of which
have different publication dates. The aim always was to
model the parishes and towns as they appeared in the
1841 Census. In all it took two years to complete the
digitising of more that 3,000 parishes and 1,500
towns.

A digital mapping system facilitates the creation of
new maps based on the underlying data. The
parish/polygon map was used to create the barony map for
the 1659 family name data. By merging parishes within
the same barony to form larger polygonal areas a new
barony map was created. The resulting map was compared
to the 1659 list of baronies to ensure accuracy.

The entry of large amounts of data into database
records can be a long and tedious process prone to
errors. To help in this process a new database was
created. The surname data was used for the column
headings and the parish and barony names used for the
row headings. The unique parish and barony UserIDs were
also included. A form for data input into this database
was created in Access. This set up a user-friendly
interface that made data capture easier and data entry
errors less likely. To further simplify the process this
data capture was done independently of the map data. The
UserIDs would be used later to link the data to the
objects in the map database.

The input form allowed the user to pick a parish or
barony and enter the name data in a structured
user-friendly form. The form allows the user to select a
barony from a list. The computer then automatically
returns to the user a list of all parishes in that
barony. The user then simply selects the parish they
wish to enter data for and the computer automatically
updates the database once the family name data has been
entered. The name data was entered for each parish and
barony through this input form and stored in tables in
the new name database.

When the attribute name data capture was completed it
had to be linked to the map database. This was done in
the ArcView GIS package using the UserID link field. The
resulting map database was then used for detailed
spatial analysis of the attribute name data and for the
production of choropleth maps.

ArcView was used for the analysis of the name data and
for the production of the numerous maps. A specific
statistical analysis was carried out to determine the
ideal legend classification for the data being mapped.
This analysis involved calculating the maximum, minimum,
mean and standard deviation for the number of
occurrences of each name in every parish and barony.
This was done to ensure that all the maps depicted the
data in a standard style that facilitated comparative
examination. The result was a legend with seven
divisions for the 1659 Census and a legend with eight
divisions for the Griffith's Valuation. Both legends
were applied uniformly across all the maps. This common
legend structure and colour coding, greatly aids the
visual interpretation of the mapped name data.

Note: It should be noted that the 1659
legend deals with the number of adults
bearing a specific surname in a barony:
the Griffith's Valuation legend (c.1850) refers to the
number of households bearing a specific
surname in a civil parish.